and "remarkable work" don't usually go together, Dan. Not for some 20 years they haven't. I'm not going to argue with you about her qualities as a scholar--that's never been in dispute--but she played such a negative role on the left with her husband the leg breaker and such a divisive role within the discipline that I can't quite get myself to think kindly of the recently departed. And turning Catholic after a secular upbringing doesn't have to translate into becoming a reactionary. Bettina Aptheker went from a fetish for Stalin to one for the Buddha but stayed pretty progressive. So, what do you think was remarkable about Fox-Genovese's work. Or, what in her life do you think was worth our remarking on?

Michael, these were very smart, able people. When they were progressives, they were perhaps impossible to like but also impossible not to admire. We should remember the admirable part.

When people who are progressive, bright and thoughtful become bitter (and more than a little nutty) right-wingers -- David Horowitz comes to mind as an example -- I sometimes wish for amnesia. I want to forget how good they were, because they've become so remarkably yucky.

Both of the Genoveses were brilliant and difficult. Their work on slavery will endure. Their work against the war in Vietnam will, too.

They argued with close co-workers more fiercely than with opponents. They were often bitter and divisive.

Their essays collected in "The Fruits of Merchant Capital" and the classic "Roll Jordan Roll" are still read and should be read as the wonderful work they are.

and, true to form, the New Republic ran a quite thoughtful piece of hers to commemorate her passing. The piece, a 1979 review of a collection of historian Gerda Lerner's essays, is on line at
http://www.tnr.com/graphics2004.1/spine/19791201_foxgenovese.pdf How somebody that good turned into a two-bit Christer is a mystery of the seas. And, as you say, David Horowitz also went from a rigorous commentator to an inquisitionist and a petty-fogger. So sad.