Books, Arts & Manners: A Voice from the Underworld

The Autobiography of Roy Cohn, by Sidney Zion (Lyle Stuart, 284 pp„ $18.95)

I met Roy Cohn a few times—a brilliant mind, a criminal mentality, a political power in the land, an ice-cold sleaze. Sidney Zion’s book amply confirms all of this, but by its sheer literary power makes the devastating and correct judgment seem banal. Zion had known Cohn for years, and as a civil-libertarian had disliked much of his politics, but during Cohn’s last, dying years Zion listened to him hour after hour. In this book, Cohn rises from the sleaze, recreated as a voice, a literary object of the first order, a Jewish Huck Finn and earth-brother of those Jewish gangsters of whom Zion has written often and so well.

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Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Hart is a contributor to National Review.

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The Autobiography of Roy Cohn, by Sidney Zion (Lyle Stuart, 284 pp„ $18.95)

I met Roy Cohn a few times—a brilliant mind, a criminal mentality, a political power in the land, an ice-cold sleaze. Sidney Zion’s book amply confirms all of this, but by its sheer literary power makes the devastating and correct judgment seem banal. Zion had known Cohn for years, and as a civil-libertarian had disliked much of his politics, but during Cohn’s last, dying years Zion listened to him hour after hour. In this book, Cohn rises from the sleaze, recreated as a voice, a literary object of the first order, a Jewish Huck Finn and earth-brother of those Jewish gangsters of whom Zion has written often and so well.