Arthur m schlesinger sr biography of michael

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary a “gadfly” is “a person who stimulates or annoys other people especially by persistent criticism.”  According to Richard Aldous, in his new biography, SCHLESINGER: THE IMPERIAL HISTORIAN, the definition fits Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s role as Special Assistant to the President during the Kennedy administration.  Aldous’ work is the first full-length biography of Schlesinger and he successfully grapples with a number of questions as his narrative unfolds.  First, was Schlesinger a great and important historian, a model of how academics and public service can mix?  Second,  was he a popularizer and court historian held captive to the establishment that nurtured his career?  After reading Aldous’ monograph there is no conclusive answer and elements of each question make up Schlesinger’s academic career at Harvard, as well as a speech writer and advisor to President Kennedy.  How

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Tides of American Politics

From the Archives

Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.

To read more from The Yale Review's American Politics archival collection, click here.

If there is one subject on which the average American considers himself an specialist, it is national politics. He may hesitate to hazard a prediction about the weather; he may be a bungler at his own business; but whether in the Pullman smoker or at the crossroads gas hållplats, he is instantly ready to expound the inner political workings of the country, as respects both the present and the future. To his help in recent years have come the tribe of columnists and the various straw-vote organizations. It seems as though everything possible were being done to expose the throbbing pulse of public opinion to universal gaze.

The trouble with such aids to better understanding is not merely that the columnists and Washington correspondents often foretell one course of events while the Gallup polls indikera another: the real

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In response to:

The Right-Wing Christians from the April 3, 2008 issue

To the Editors:

Reviewing Garry Wills’s Head and Heart: American Christianities in the April 3 issue, Andrew Delbanco refers to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s “well-known view of American politics, put forward in The Cycles of American History (1986),” as swinging over time from left to right and back again. The model, however, was not Schlesinger Jr.’s invention. It had been outlined in print in 1922 by Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. in an essay, “Radicalism and Conservatism in American History,” published in New Viewpoints in American History. Harvard students of my generation may recall Schlesinger Sr.’s applications of it. Its longer-term influence is evident in Schlesinger Jr.’s extensions, elaborations, and revisions.

Michael McGiffert

Williamsburg, Virginia

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