Harvey Swados.html



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Harvey Swados (1920-1972) was a Jewish-American novelist and essayist. He was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of a doctor and is a graduate of the University of Michigan. Swados was a four-year veteran of the Merchant Marine during World War II and published his first novel in 1955.

He also taught at Sarah Lawrence and the University of Massachusetts.¹

Swados's 1959 essay for Esquire, "Why Resign from the Human Race?", has often been said to have inspired the formation of the Peace Corps.^{citation needed}

He died in 1972 of a brain hemorrhage.²

Published works

Novels

• Out Went the Candle (New York: Viking, 1955)
• False Coin (Boston: Atlantic/Little, Brown, 1959)
• The Will (Cleveland: World, 1963)
• Standing Fast (Garden City: Doubleday, 1970)
• Celebration (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975)
• The Unknown Constellations (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995)

Short story collections

• On the Line (Boston: Atlantic/Little, Brown, 1957)
• Nights in the Gardens of Brooklyn (Boston: Atlantic/Little, Brown, 1960)
• A Story for Teddy and Others (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965)
• Nights in the Gardens of Brooklyn: The Collected Stories of Harvey Swados. Introduction by Robin Swados. (New York: Viking Penguin, 1986)

Essays

• A Radical’s America (Boston: Atlantic/Little, Brown, 1962)
• A Radical at Large: American Essays (London: Hart-Davis, 1968).

Edited works

• Years of Conscience: The Muckrakers (Cleveland: Meridian, 1962)
• The American Writer and the Great Depression (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966)

Children’s literature/Translations

• Agouhanna, by Claude Aubry. Translated from the French by Harvey Swados. Illustrated by Grey Cohoe. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971)
• Bim, The Little Donkey, by Albert Lamorisse. Translated from the French by Harvey and Bette Swados (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971)
• The Mystery of the Spanish Silver Mine (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971)

Biography

• Standing Up for the People: The Life and Work of Estes Kefauver (New York: Dutton, 1972)

References