The War Years, 1939-1945: A Nonconformist History of Our Times

``Izzy'' Stone was one of the very few prominent Americans who outspokenly pressured the Roosevelt administration to aid Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler. In the war's early years, when many Americans preached isolationism, this maverick journalist lashed out at monopolistic interests in the U.S. whose profiteering jeopardized our national defense. Aside from their courage, these columns and essays reprinted from the Nation show admirable prescience. For example, Stone criticized U.S. State Department interference that weakened the Allies' efforts to jointly punish Nazi war criminals. Visiting Palestine in late 1945, he sharply warned that the creation of a Jewish state would sow seeds of divisiveness unless Arabs' needs for self-development were met. He excoriates widespread poverty in the U.S., bad housing, outbreaks of racial violence, corruptionissues that plague us today. Much of Stone's muscular prose has a contemporary zing: ``Chicago is magnificent, a brutal force, an imperial city.'' These pieces meld into a vivid newsreel that throws light on the 1940sand the '80s. (September)