The Sweet Dream

Utopia and Revolution By Melvin J. Lasky Chicago, 726 pp., $35 Mel Lasky is something of a sport in the American intellectual community, although he joined it conventionally enough in the Thirties, as an undergraduate at City College of New York, spawning ground of so many of the talented Jewish intellectuals who went on to take charge of American cultural life. It was during those days that he became a protégé of Sol Levitas, managing editor of The New Leader and the nicest social democrat who ever lived. Lasky studied also at Michigan and Columbia, and, when the U.S. got into the war, shifted from campus to army. As a combat historian he entered conquered, divided Berlin, traumatic synecdoche of the cold war that was the closest to Peace the four victors could manage.

Lasky quickly got to know everyone in town—the occupation authorities, both civil and military, as well as the West German writers, artists, academics, and politicians. He became a good friend of another fine social democrat, Ernst Reuter, who, as West Berlin’s mayor, led his city out of the rubble and firmly countered the East’s provocations. By an adroit miracle, Lasky wangled a subsidy out of somebody or other for a monthly magazine, Der Monat, with himself as editor.

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James Burnham

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Utopia and Revolution By Melvin J. Lasky Chicago, 726 pp., $35 Mel Lasky is something of a sport in the American intellectual community, although he joined it conventionally enough in the Thirties, as an undergraduate at City College of New York, spawning ground of so many of the talented Jewish intellectuals who went on to take charge of American cultural life. It was during those days that he became a protégé of Sol Levitas, managing editor of The New Leader and the nicest social democrat who ever lived. Lasky studied also at Michigan and Columbia, and, when the U.S. got into the war, shifted from campus to army. As a combat historian he entered conquered, divided Berlin, traumatic synecdoche of the cold war that was the closest to Peace the four victors could manage.

Lasky quickly got to know everyone in town—the occupation authorities, both civil and military, as well as the West German writers, artists, academics, and politicians. He became a good friend of another fine social democrat, Ernst Reuter, who, as West Berlin’s mayor, led his city out of the rubble and firmly countered the East’s provocations. By an adroit miracle, Lasky wangled a subsidy out of somebody or other for a monthly magazine, Der Monat, with himself as editor.