While Syrkin's work is familiar to an older generation of American Zionists, Kessner's extraordinary biography should spark interest in Syrkin's life and ideas in many new quarters. . . .With Syrkin so deeply involved with so many key world events, from the Stalinist purges to the rise of Hitler, from debates over the Mandate to battles over Arab refugees, her biography reads like a history of the 20th century. But unlike most histories, delivered in the passive voice, Syrkin's is active and passionate and utterly mesmerizing. Kessner, a long time protege of Syrkin's, is a talented biographer; not only is her prose graceful and occasionally quite witty, but she understands how to insert the telling quotation, the background detail that clarifies, the right lines from the right poem.
—Jewish Book World

Finally, Zionist thinker Marie Syrkin gets the recognition she deserves . . . It is not sentimental over praise to say that Marie Syrkin deserves a place at the roundtable of great intellects who helped shape contemporary Jewish-American liberalism.
—Haaretz

Carole S. Kessner is Professor Emerita, Department of Comparative Studies, SUNY Stony Brook. She is the recipient of the Marie Syrkin Fellowship for 1994, and the winner of the 2009  National Jewish Book Award for Biography. The author of many essays and articles ranging from "Milton's Hebraic Herculean Hero" to "The Emma Lazarus-Henry James Connection:Eight Letters," she is the editor and contributor to The "Other" New York Jewish Intellectuals (1994) and is the co-editor of  and contributor to Studies in American Jewish Literature: vol.29, 2010. She lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.