Max Eastman - Assessment of Literary Works

Assessment of Literary Works

A prolific writer, Eastman published more than twenty books on subjects as diverse as the scientific method, humor, Freudian psychology and Soviet culture. He composed five volumes of poetry, a novel and translated into English some of the work of Alexander Pushkin. For the Modern Library, he edited and abridged Marx' Das Kapital.

He also produced two volumes of memoirs, as well as two volumes of recollections of his friendships and personal encounters with many of the leading figures of his time, including: Pablo Casals, Charlie Chaplin, Eugene Debs, John Dewey, Isadora Duncan, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Ernest Hemingway, H. L. Mencken, John Reed, Paul Robeson, Bertrand Russell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, George Santayana, E. W. Scripps, George Bernard Shaw, Carlo Tresca, Leon Trotsky, Mark Twain and H. G. Wells. His biographical portraits have been called "brilliant," and his psychological study of the young Trotsky, "pioneering," by the historian John Patrick Diggins. Eastman's last memoir was Love and Revolution: My Journey Through an Epic (1964).

In 1969 he died at his summer home in Bridgetown, Barbados, at the age of 86.

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