Victor Navasky, author and longtime head of the Nation, died on January 23 at age 90. Navasky's best-known book was Naming Names, which the New York Times called "a breakthrough chronicle of the Hollywood blacklisting era." Published in 1980, Naming Names won the National Book Award in 1982 for general nonfiction paperback. "The book focused on the ex-Communist writers, directors and producers who testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and chose to inform on colleagues," the Times wrote. "Critics praised the book for its fairness and its compassion for people grappling with wrenching choices."
At the Nation, from 1978 to 2005, Navasky published and encouraged such writers as Alexander Cockburn, Christopher Hitchens, Calvin Trillin, Toni Morrison, Eric Foner, Katha Pollitt and Katrina vanden Heuvel. From 1972 to 1976, he wrote "In Cold Print," a monthly column on the publishing world for the New York Times Book Review. (He was an editor at the New York Times Magazine before he joined the Nation.)
Navasky was also at the center of a case that tested the principle of fair use of copyrighted material. In 1979, the Nation obtained an early copy of A Time to Heal, former President Gerald Ford's memoir, and printed extensive excerpts from it. Harper & Row sued for copyright infringement; the Nation argued it was fair use of the book. The Supreme Court sided with Harper & Row, and the Nation had to pay damages of $12,500.
Navasky's busy career included his early founding and editing of Monocle, a political satirical magazine; his stint at the New York Times; managing Ramsey Clark's 1974 losing campaign against Senator Jacob Javits; teaching at Columbia University; chairing the Columbia Journalism Review; and contributing to NPR's Marketplace. Among the many awards he won was the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence from Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism in 2017.
In addition to Naming Names, Navasky wrote Kennedy Justice (1971), about the Justice Department when Robert F. Kennedy was Attorney General in the early 1960s, and A Matter of Opinion (2005), which the AP called "a memoir and a passionate defense of free expression." A Matter of Opinion won the George K. Polk Book Award. His most recent book was The Art of Controversy: Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power, which was published by Knopf in 2013. Naming Names is available in paperback from Hill and Wang.
