American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth

American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace (Norton, 2000) is reviewed elsewhere in this issue. So I will just make a short plug for this history of progressive politics in America.

It is particularly striking to read, in the wake of the 2000 election, a book about a third party Presidential candidate who denounced the two lookalike, corporate-dominated parties, who was accused of stealing votes from the Democrats, who was a public intellectual and policy expert advocating protections for ordinary citizens against the predations of global capitalism, who wore rumpled suits, was a workaholic, a visionary, ill-at-ease in snobby Washington society, who galvanized the left, infuriated liberals, and ultimately got 2.4 percent of the vote. The similarities between...