Document Type
Article
Date
Fall 1987
Keywords
Syracuse University Special Collections, Granville Hicks, I Like America, Great Depression, Communist Party, Popular Front, Alistair Cooke
Language
English
Disciplines
American Literature | American Studies | Political History
Description/Abstract
Written at the urging of his friend Louis Birk, managing editor of Modern Age Books, I Like America was Granville Hicks' attempt to present to a middle-class audience "the official line of the Communist Party in the Popular Front period". Published when the slogan 'Communism is Twentieth-Century Americanism' identified the interests of the mass of the American population, which was suffering from the Depression and the inadequate response of the New Deal for relief, with the aims of the Party, the book was later described by Hicks as "a venture in propaganda". The Granville Hicks Papers in the George Arents Research Library at Syracuse University document the history of I Like America, including the book outline, the proposal as presented to Louis Birk and the subsequent editorial correspondence, book reviews, and the more than 150 letters Hicks received in response to what literary historian Jack Alan Robbins describes as an "evangelical yet totally undogmatic" exercise in political persuasion.
Recommended Citation
Manwaring, Kathleen. "Alistair Cooke: A Response to Granville Hicks' I Like America." The Courier 22.2 (1987): 23-32.
Source
local input
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
