Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
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Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. (b. October 15, 1917) is an American liberal political scientist and social critic whose work has focused on the philosophies and policies of U.S. presidents, including Andrew Jackson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Richard Nixon. He served as Special Assistant to the President in John F. Kennedy administration. He wrote the definitive account of the Kennedy Administration entitled "A Thousand Days."
He was born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of Arthur M. Schlesinger (1888-1965), who was a respected historian.
Schlesinger is a prolific contributor to liberal theory and is a passionate and articulate voice for Kennedyism and the Great Society. He is admired for his wit, scholarship, and devotion to the liberal agenda, writing several books over the course of his career.
He coined the term "imperial presidency" during the Nixon administration.
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Career
Education
- 1933 Phillips Exeter Academy
- 1938 Harvard University - Society of Fellows, 1939-1942
War time service
- 1942–1943 Office of War Information
- 1943–1945 Office of Strategic Services
Educator
- 1946-1961 professor of history at Harvard
- Elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1961.
- 1966 Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at City University of New York Graduate Center - emeritus, 1994
- 1999-present board member, Century Institute
Democratic Activist
- Among the founders of Americans for Democratic Action
- Wrote speeches for Adlai Stevenson's two Presidential campaigns
- Wrote speeches and helped bring the left to John F. Kennedy's campaign
- 1961-1964 Presidential special assistant for Latin American affairs and speech writer
- Since May 2005 he's been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post.
Writings
He won a Pulitzer Prize in history for his 1945 book The Age of Jackson.
His 1949 book The Vital Center is considered a landmark work of political analysis which made a case for the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, while harshly critical of both unregulated capitalism and of those liberals who advocated cooperation or sympathy with totalitarian ideologies such as communism.
His 1986 book The Cycles of American History was an early work on the relationship of cyclical generations of politics in the United States, and influenced William Strauss and Neil Howe's later work in the area.
He was a contributor to The National Experience, an American history textbook.
He has written more recently about the erosion of common civic engagement brought about by multiculturalism, in the book The Disuniting of America (1991).
Schlesinger's Ten Most Influential People of the Second Millennium list, from the 2000 World Almanac & Book of Facts
- William Shakespeare, 1564-1616
- Isaac Newton, 1642-1727
- Charles Darwin, 1809-82
- Nicolaus Copernicus, 1473-1543
- Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642
- Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
- Christopher Columbus, 1451-1506
- Abraham Lincoln, 1809-65
- Johann Gutenberg, c. 1397-1468
- William Harvey, 1578-1657
Autobiography: A Life in the 20th Century, Innocent Beginnings, 1917–1950 (2000)
Works
- 1939 Orestes A. Brownson: A Pilgrim's Progress
- 1945 The Age of Jackson
- 1949 The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom
- 1950 What About Communism?
- 1951 The General and the President, and the Future of American Foreign Policy
- 1957 The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933 (The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. I)
- 1958 The Coming of the New Deal: 1933-1935 (The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. II)
- 1960 The Politics of Upheaval: 1935-1936 (The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. III)
- 1960 Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference?
- 1963 The Politics of Hope
- 1965 A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
- 1965 The MacArthur Controversey and American Foreign Policy
- 1967 Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy, 1941-1966
- 1967 Congress and the Presidency: Their Role in Modern Times
- 1968 Violence: America in the Sixties
- 1969 The Crisis of Confidence: Ideas, Power, and Violence in America
- 1970 The Origins of the Cold War
- 1973 The Imperial Presidency
- 1978 Robert Kennedy and His Times
- 1983 Creativity in Statecraft
- 1986 Cycles of American History
- 1988 JFK Remembered
- 1988 War and the Constitution: Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt
- 1990 Is the Cold War Over?
- 1991 The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society
- 2000 Autobiography: A Life in the 20th Century, Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950
- 2004 War and the American Presidency
Awards
- 1946 Pulitzer Prize for History - The Age of Jackson
- 1965 National Book Award for A Thousand Days
- 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Biography - A Thousand Days
- 1979 National Book Award for Robert Kennedy and His Times
- 1998 National Humanities Medal
- 2003 Four Freedoms Award
Quote
If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.
