Making It

“A frank and honest book…high-stepping brilliance…tactfully and touchingly revealing of the fearful ambitions of Podhoretz’s family…. Podhoretz has ‘allowed himself to be fully known’ and so may give the key to the B.Y.M. (Bright Young Men) of the next generation, which will allow them to shuck the iron mask of premature intellectual good taste and join in the common pursuit of self-knowledge and self-expression.” —Frederic Raphael, The New York Times

“This masterpiece of American autobiography is the tale of a striving, self-mythologized, and nearly Melvillean figure crashing toward his own salvation—and more…. Nearly 50 years on, it’s clear that, to paraphrase Dostoevsky on Gogol, we all come out from Podhoretz’s overcoat.” —Lee Smith, Tablet

“One can’t really understand the state of so-called highbrow culture today without first coming to terms with the career of Norman Podhoretz. Along with Jason and Barbara Epstein, Robert Silvers, Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer and a few others (the ‘children’ of Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling and Philip Rahv), Mr. Podhoretz reconceived the very idea of what it means to be an intellectual.” —Robert S. Boynton, The New York Observer

“Making It was a brave and original book.” —Robert Fulford, The Globe and Mail

“Podhoretz’s analysis of the power of the family is penetrating.” —Andrew M. Greeley, The Reporter

One can’t really understand the state of so-called highbrow culture today without first coming to terms with the career of Norman Podhoretz. Along with Jason and Barbara Epstein, Robert Silvers, Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer and a few others (the ‘children’ of Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling and Philip Rahv), Mr. Podhoretz reconceived the very idea of what it means to be an intellectual.
The New York Observer

Norman Podhoretz (1930 - 2025) was an author, editor, and political and cultural critic. He served as the editor of Commentary from 1960 to 1995 and authored twelve books, including World War IV, The Prophets, Ex-Friends, Why Are Jews Liberals?, and his autobiography Making It. In 2004, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Terry Teachout (1956 - 2022) was the drama critic for The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large for Commentary. He wrote biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, Duke Ellington, and H. L. Mencken; the libretti for three operas by Paul Moravec; and a play, Satchmo at the Waldorf, which has been produced off-Broadway and across America.

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