SOURCE: Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. “What Happened to the Left?” Commonweal 123, no. 6 (22 March 1996): 22-3.

In the following review of The Twilight of Common Dreams, Fox-Genovese suggests that the main weakness of the book is Gitlin's effort to reclaim the moral high ground for the Left by dismissing the complexity of its opposition.

Like many today, Todd Gitlin mourns the eclipse of common dreams and deplores the narrow identity politics that fuels our escalating culture wars. But, unlike many who express similar concerns, he unflinchingly writes as a man of the Left, which, notwithstanding the admirable values he defends, occasionally draws him into blind alleys. Gitlin's views frequently echo those of Jean Bethke Elshtain, the late Christopher Lasch, and a variety of other fervent proponents of social justice, civility, and democratic renewal, but he appears considerably more wedded than they to social and economic policies that depend heavily upon the intervention...