SOURCE: Gewen, Barry. “Pious Patriotics.” New Leader 69, no. 7 (7-21 April 1986): 3-4.

In the following review, Gewen offers both positive and negative assessments of the individual essays in The Bloody Crossroads: Where Literature and Politics Meet. Gewen also admits his confusion with Podhoretz's affinity for George Orwell, noting that Orwell shares many of the same political views as Podhoretz's political adversaries.

Norman Podhoretz is the most strident of the neo-conservatives. He is the cheerleader of the group, its street fighter and its hanging judge. Although his pronouncements on economic and foreign policy—support for free-market capitalism, opposition to arms treaties of any kind—place him somewhere in the vicinity of Jesse Helms and Jeremiah Denton on the American political spectrum, it is not the positions themselves that set him apart (and others' teeth on edge) so much as his manner in espousing them.

Having turned away from the Left...