American Night

“A solid contribution to American studies, this will be welcomed by literary scholars, historians, and political scientists for its thorough research and wide ranging scholarship.” — Library Journal

“A majestic trilogy. . . . Wald’s invaluable writings underscore the relationship between how to study the world and how to change it. American Night can be a valuable tool to help people do both.” — International Socialist Review

“The book’s biggest contribution is Wald’s material on homosexuality in the CP and its milieu, in which he examines the related prejudices of the party line and the society it supposedly stood in opposition to.” — Criticism

“Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate; graduate students.” — CHOICE

“Never has the creative, beating literary heart of the Popular Front been put under such microscopic attention. . . . No literary scholar but Wald could have raised the assorted political and person questions in this book as keenly, or gone as far to explore the grappling for answers that constitutes a great legacy of that always scarred, often heroic generation.” — Rain Taxi Review of Books

“Extraordinary diligence and meticulousness has allowed Wald to unearth a startlingly large post-war group of struggling literary leftists. He has gone to every conceivable archive, read every relevant work, and interviewed anyone who could possibly have told him anything of substance about the novelists, poets and playwrights included in American Night.” — Jewish Currents

“All of Alan Wald’s invaluable writings underscore the relationship between how to study the world and how to change it. American Night can be a valuable tool to help people do both.” — International Socialist Review

“For cultural historians who share Wald’s political interest and anti-hierarchical philosophy,American Night will come as a revelation as it brings dark matter to light.” — Modernism/modernity

“Wald’s work in American Night and the two volumes that preceded it are requisite reading, indeed the starting point, for anyone interested in the carefully hidden history of the literary left.” — Against the Current

“Wald is superb in analyzing serious fiction.” — Canadian Journal of History