“Reared in a Yiddish-speaking socialist home she dallied with communism as a college student, became a staunch FDR Democrat in the 1930s, and then was a committed liberal until the mid-1960s. But by the end of her life, Dawidowicz identified as a neoconservative” (3). With this statement Nancy Sinkoff outlines the premise of her intellectual biography of Lucy S. Dawidowicz, From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History. Sinkoff, a specialist in Eastern European Jewish and intellectual history at Rutgers’ Bildner Center, and author of the introduction to Dawidowicz's memoir, From the Place and Time: A Memoir 1938–1947 (2008), is well suited to writing the first biography of this interesting intellectual, which seeks to make a historical interconnection between the European Jewish past and twentieth-century American Jewish political behaviour.

The biography is divided into four sections, each dealing with a different period of Dawidowicz's extraordinary life. The first focusses on Dawidowicz's early life and flirtation with radical politics. The second explores her life at the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institute (YIVO) in Vilna and her narrow escape from the Nazi occupation of Poland. The third analyses Dawidowicz's return to Europe in the immediate postwar years, where she worked with displaced persons in Germany and was instrumental in rescuing and transferring numerous documents to the YIVO in New York. The fourth considers Dawidowicz's life in the American Jewish diaspora and studies her work for the American Jewish Committee (AJC), Commentary magazine, and the publication of The Golden Tradition: The Jewish Experience in Eastern Europe (1967) and The War against the Jews, 1933–1945 (1975). This clearly defined structure helps the reader to navigate Dawidowicz's changing views and locations and enables Sinkoff to successfully “connect postwar American Jewish political conservatism to the long history of Jewish politics” (6).

Sinkoff's argument is aided by her expert contextualization of Dawidowicz's thought throughout the biography. This is especially true of the chapters dealing with Dawidowicz's time in Europe, where Sinkoff's background as a scholar of Eastern European history shines through (37–105). She recounts how the intensifying anti-Semitism in Poland indirectly affected Dawidowicz and the impact of witnessing the aftermath of the Holocaust firsthand. Most important of all, Sinkoff posits that this experience was more than just interesting biography; it is crucial to understanding her later scholarship. She explains that Dawidowicz's disagreement with other intellectuals, such as Hannah Arendt and Raul Hilberg, over the historiography of the Holocaust “derived from personal, historiographic, and political considerations” (184). Thanks to the excellent contextualization of Dawidowicz's time in Europe, this argument is particularly persuasive.

A second strength of the biography is its creative approach when addressing the New York intellectuals and neoconservatism. Sinkoff argues that despite the plethora of works on the famous New York intellectual circle “no one has paid attention to Dawidowicz's parallel political evolution from left to right” (3). By rectifying this, Sinkoff offers fresh perspective on the debates of the group's shift rightwards in the postwar period, particularly in relation to religion (269–89). Moreover, Sinkoff notes, traditionally women have been overlooked, with the exception of Mary McCarthy and Hannah Ardent, due to the reliance on published materials. In order to address this issue Sinkoff draws upon the memos and pamphlets which Dawidowicz wrote for the American Jewish Council (AJC) on themes such as “Big City Tensions” and “Big City Tensions: Schools.” Through the use of these sources, Sinkoff demonstrates not only Dawidowicz's influence on the AJC but also her early conservativism (124–36). The inclusion of a wider source base allows Sinkoff to engage fully with Dawidowicz's ideas and provides an original approach to this crowded field.

Sinkoff deals with Dawidowicz's liberalism and conservatism aptly; however, the biography would benefit from greater exploration of her connections to radicalism. Dawidowicz's radicalism is dealt with only briefly during the section on her education at Hunter College and editorship of Echo magazine (16–26). A more in-depth look at the kind of radical politics with which Dawidowicz was engaging would further our understanding of her political transition.

Aside from this minor quibble, Sinkoff's argument is convincing and she provides a nuanced biography of a previously overlooked figure. She demonstrates the importance of including women in New York intellectual and neoconservative scholarship, and successfully links the Jewish past to modern American politics. Those interested in American intellectual history and Jewish studies should read this fascinating biography.