Kazin was deeply affected by his peers' subsequent disillusion with socialism and
liberalism. Adam Kirsch writes in
The New Republic that "having invested his romantic self-image in liberalism, Kazin perceived abandonment of liberalism by his peers as an attack on his identity". In 1951, he wrote the acclaimed memoir
A Walker in the City, where he details his childhood in the Jewish milieu of
Brownsville in
Brooklyn. It was a finalist for the
National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1952. The subsequent sequels,
Starting Out in the Thirties (1965) and
New York Jew (1978) were also finalists for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He wrote out of a great passion—or great disgust—for what he was reading and embedded his opinions in a deep knowledge of history, both
literary history and politics and culture. In 1996 he was awarded the first
Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award in Literary Criticism, which carries a cash award of $100,000. As of 2014, the only other person to have won the award was
George Steiner. In 1963 he became a distinguished professor in the English Department at the
State University of New York at Stony Brook. He stayed at Stony Brook for ten years before taking up distinguished professor positions at
Hunter College and the
Graduate Center of the City University of New York (1973–1978, 1979–1985). ==Personal life==