Max Eastman – 1883-1969

A philosophy professor at Columbia University, Eastman edited The Masses, a radical political and literary journal whose editors were tried twice in 1918 for opposing America’s entry into World War I. After the war, Eastman edited The Liberator, another popular radical magazine, then traveled to the Soviet Union in 1922 to see firsthand the effects of the Bolshevik Revolution. Appalled by what he believed was a betrayal of the Communist ideal, he wrote a series of anti-Soviet books, and in 1941 became a roving editor for The Reader’s Digest, the only mainstream periodical he ever worked for.