Editing Irving Howe (section)

==Early life and career==
Howe was born '''Irving Horenstein''' in [[The Bronx]], [[New York City|New York]] in 1920. He was the son of [[Bessarabian Jews|Jewish]] immigrants from [[Bessarabia]], Nettie (née Goldman) and David Horenstein, who ran a small grocery store that went out of business during the [[Great Depression]].<ref>{{cite book |title=Politics and the Intellectual: Conversations with Irving Howe |editor-last1=Rodden |editor-first1=John |editor-last2=Goffman |editor-first2=Ethan |location=West Lafayette, IN |publisher=Purdue University Press |isbn=1557535515 |page=xv |chapter=Chronology |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DCwaO17isQMC&dq=Irving+Howe+Horenstein&pg=PR15 |year=2010}}</ref> Irving's father became a peddler and eventually a presser in a dress factory. His mother was an operator in the dress trade.<ref name=NYT/><ref>{{cite book |last=Howe |first=Irving |title=A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Autobiography |publisher=Harcourt Brace Jovanovich |year=1982 |page=7 |isbn=0151571384}} Re: the family store's bankruptcy in 1930 when he was ten, Howe later wrote: "We were dropping from the lower middle class to the proletarian—the most painful of all social descents. This unsettled my sense of things: I was driven inward, toward book and dream."</ref>

Irving attended [[DeWitt Clinton High School]] in northwest Bronx, where he was already a left-wing activist.{{sfn|Howe|1982|pp=28–29}} He then matriculated to [[City College of New York]] (CCNY) in 1936.{{sfn|Rodden|Goffman|2010|p=xv}} He graduated alongside [[Daniel Bell]] and [[Irving Kristol]] in 1940.<ref name=NYT/> By summer of that year, he had changed his surname from Horenstein to Howe for political (as distinct from official) purposes.<ref>Edward Alexander, ''Irving Howe - Socialist, Critic, Jew'' ([[Indiana University Press]], 1998; {{ISBN|0253113210}}), p. 10.</ref> While in college, he was constantly debating socialism, Stalinism, fascism, and the meaning of Judaism.

During [[World War II]], Howe served four years in the U.S. Army, stationed mostly at [[Fort Richardson (Alaska)|Fort Richardson]] near [[Anchorage, Alaska]].{{sfn|Howe|1982|p=91}} Upon his return to New York, he began writing literary and cultural criticism for ''[[Partisan Review]]'' and was a frequent essayist for ''[[Commentary (magazine)|Commentary]]'', ''[[Politics (magazine 1944-1949)|Politics]]'', ''[[The Nation]]'', ''[[The New Republic]]'', and ''[[The New York Review of Books]]''.{{sfn|Howe|1982|pp=113–122}} He then worked for several years as one of the resident book reviewers for ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine.{{sfn|Howe|1982|pp=123–127}} In 1954, he co-founded the intellectual quarterly ''[[Dissent (American magazine)|Dissent]]'', which he edited until his death.<ref name=NYT/> In the 1950s, Howe taught English and [[Yiddish]] literature at [[Brandeis University]]. His anthology ''A Treasury of Yiddish Stories'' (1954), co-edited with Eliezer Greenberg, became a standard text in college courses.<ref name = Wisse/> Howe's research and translations of Yiddish literature occurred at a time when few were appreciating or spreading knowledge about it in American universities.