18 Facts About Maurice Isserman

Maurice Isserman's books have traced the emergence of the New Left and the 1960s.

Maurice Isserman co-authored a biography of Dorothy Ray Healey and wrote an award-winning biography of the American socialist leader Michael Harrington.

Maurice Isserman has contributed editorials and book reviews to The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Newsday, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and The American Alpine Review.

Maurice Isserman's mother, born Flora Huffman, was the daughter and sister of Quaker ministers, graduated from a Quaker college, and was a social worker for Connecticut.

Maurice Isserman's father, Jacob Isserman, was born in Antwerp and came with his family to the US in 1906 at four; later naturalized as a US citizen, he was a machinist who worked at the Pratt and Whitney aircraft factory in East Hartford, Connecticut.

Maurice Isserman argued for the petitioners in Dennis v United States.

Maurice Isserman's parents had divorced in 1959, and his mother remarried Walter Snow, a local newspaper reporter who had been a Communist in the 1930s, a minor figure on the literary left.

Maurice Isserman wrote a senior thesis on the history of radical American writers in the 1930s and worked on another underground newspaper, The Portland Scribe.

Maurice Isserman graduated with a BA in history in 1973 and stayed on another year, working evenings as a proofreader for The Oregonian and days for The Portland Scribe.

Maurice Isserman received his MA in American history in 1976 and his PhD in 1979.

Maurice Isserman's first job was a replacement position for a semester at Oberlin College in fall 1979, followed by replacement positions at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and then back to Oberlin.

Maurice Isserman settled into Smith College from 1982 to 1988, followed by temporary positions at Mount Holyoke College and Williams College.

Maurice Isserman returned to the theme with a chapter on the history of the CPUSA's "destalinization crisis" in his second book on the emergence of the New Left, If I Had a Hammer in 1987, and in his co-authored work with Healey, Dorothy Healey Remembers, in 1990.

Maurice Isserman wrote a prize-winning biography of America's best known socialist of his time, Michael Harrington, leader of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Maurice Isserman has criticized the new Students for a Democratic Society for romanticizing the leadership of the Weatherman faction of the old SDS.

In recent years, Maurice Isserman has turned to his love of mountaineering to find a fresh focus for his work and wrote Fallen Giants: The History of Himalayan Mountaineering with Stewart Weaver, acclaimed as the "authoritative history" of the subject, and Continental Divide: A History of American Mountaineering, about mountaineering in the United States.

Maurice Isserman is writing a history of Hamilton College for its bicentennial in 2012.

Maurice Isserman pursues a passion for mountain-climbing, about which he has written the award-winning book Fallen Giants.