SOURCE: Romano, John. “Writers & Writing: Making Politics Simple.” New Leader 62, no. 21 (5 November 1979): 16-17.

In the following review, Romano debates the wisdom of Podhoretz's intractability and black-and-white view of politics in Breaking Ranks.

There appeared, recently, on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, a very amusing account of a disease called Sixtomania. The sufferer compulsively refers to the '60s, pines for the '60s, understands the '50s or the '70s only in relation to the '60s, understands himself only in relation to the '60s, etc. Mild cases of this disease are common, but I know just two people in whom the symptoms are far advanced. One works in a record shop, talks compulsively about Eric Clapton and Baba Ram Dass, and has stubbornly held out against the newer, shorter hairstyles; it is a sadness to all his friends, for he was once...