Louis Adamic, a Slovenian-American writer and political activist, died almost 70 years ago; once prominent, he is now largely forgotten. Adamic's writings and the issues he addressed, however, are remarkably current. American democracy, he argued, is defined by its opposition to white supremacy, xenophobia, and corporate hegemony. These conditions, he contended, along with a mostly imagined history of past national greatness, are characteristic of fascist countries. Adamic was, as John P. Enyeart's new biography reminds us, a lifelong and passionate antifascist.
Adamic came to the United States in 1913, at age fifteen, from his native Slovenia, then a part of Austria-Hungary under the Hapsburg dynasty. In December 1916, shortly before the United States entered World War I, he joined the U.S. Army and by 1917 had become a U.S. citizen. In the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary that followed the war, Slovenia was submerged in a multiethnic Kingdom of Yugoslavia, a repressive...