Bravo to Paul Buhle! It’s easy for even great thinkers, like E.P. Thompson and their work to disappear into intellectual ether as new generations move on to new challenges, intellectual and political. Let’s hope your appreciation helps to recover Thompson’s life and legacy for today’s activists who face a far more complex reality than we did. I read Thompson later than most, in the 1990s. By then I had crossed enough streams and encountered enough dead ends to leave me wondering about my understanding of class, marxism, and socialism. Luckily my meet up with Thompson made all the difference in the world. It allowed me to look at theory, history, and practical politics with new eyes and in new ways, which I don’t regret, even though it got me in more trouble than I could have anticipated at the time.