Word: loeb
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Kevin Cash provides a rambling account of Loeb's life, showing him as a Long Island socialite, a 1930s left-winger--he was a co-chairman of the Communist-dominated Committee to Boycott Aggressor Nations--an unsubtle adulterer, and a World War II draft evader. Placing particular emphasis on various peculiarities in Loeb's personal life--he was disowned and sued by his mother, he later disowned his own daughter, and he seems to have had Jewish ties despite his apparent anti-Semitism--Cash presents a portrait of a paranoid and unscrupulous gun-toting publisher. Loeb's well-known alliance...
INSOFAR AS Cash has done a good job discrediting Loeb, he is worthy of praise for his effort, particularly since this is the New Hampshire primary season, usually the Union Leader's peak power period. The book has quickly become the largest seller in the history of New Hampshire. Both Loeb and Governor Meldrim Thomson have sued Cash for libel, and Loeb's personal history is suddenly a topic of national curiosity...
Cash exhibits a colorful style, as in his discussion of how the Loeb papers created a candidate to oppose John F. Kennedy in the 1960 primary...
UNFORTUNATELY, Cash's approach often parallels the Loeb technique. The book contains no footnotes, no index, and very little attributed material. In addition to having been self-published, it appears to have been self-edited, and entire sections are so obscure as to represent a total loss...
...Cash's failures are more fundamental than simply lack of documentation, a propensity for making historical errors and tortured writing. It is a mistake to quantify Loeb's power in terms of the support his candidates for public office receive. Certainly there is a hard core Loeb constituency in New Hampshire. Indeed an actual Loeb party, a Republican faction, has played a key role in state politics for a long time. But the political success of reactionaries like Meldrim Thomson and Wesley Powell is only one standard with which to measure the Loeb influence. The Union Leader informs the political...