Harold Isaacs

Harold Robert Isaacs (1910–1986) was an American journalist and political scientist. Isaacs went to China in 1930 and became involved with left wing politics in Shanghai and wrote The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, about the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, first published with a preface by Leon Trotsky. He covered World War II in Southeast Asia and China for Newsweek Magazine. In 1953 he joined the department of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the following years he published Scratches on our Minds: American Images of China and India, American Jews in Israel, and The New World of Negro Americans, among others. In 1980, he returned to China with his wife, Viola, and wrote an account of the visit, Re-Encounters in China.

In 1950, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.

He and his wife had two children, the journalist Arnold R. Isaacs and Deborah Shipler.

Selected articles and works

• Five years of Kuomintang reaction (editor) (1932)
• Isaacs, Harold Robert (1938). The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution. London: Secker & Warburg; Reprinted, with a Preface by Arnold Isaacs, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2009. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help)
• New cycle in Asia : selected documents in major international development in the Far East, 1943-1947 (editor) (1947)
• Two-thirds of the world : problems of a new approach to the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (1950)
• Africa : new crisis in the making (1952)
• Scratches on our minds : American images of China and India (1958); reprinted as Images of Asia : American views of China and India (1972)
• Emergent Americans; a report on "Crossroads Africa."(1961)
• The new world of Negro Americans (1964)
• India's ex-Untouchables (1965)
• American Jews in Israel (1967)
• No peace for Asia (1947)
• Straw sandals; Chinese short stories, 1918-1933 (editor)(1974)
• Idols of the tribe : group identity and political change (1975)
• Power and identity : tribalism in world politics (1979)
• 'Isaacs, Harold R (1985). Re-Encounters in China: Notes of a Journey in a Time Capsule. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 1315495643. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help)

References and further reading

• Rotter, Andrew Jon (1996), "In Retrospect: Harold R. Isaacs's Scratches on Our Minds", Reviews in American History, 24 (1): 177–188
• Shipler, David K., Brexit, Trump, and Idols of the Tribe, The Shipler Report, June 25, 2015

External links

• Articles in the Marxists Internet Archive
• The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution from Mehring Books