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Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. (/ˈʃlɛsɪnər/ SHLESS-in-jər; born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007) was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a specialist in American history, much of Schlesinger's work explored the history of 20th-century American liberalism. In particular, his work focused on leaders such as Harry S. Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. In the 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns, he was a primary speechwriter and adviser to the Democratic presidential nominee, Adlai Stevenson II.[2] Schlesinger served as special assistant and "court historian"[3] to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy administration, from the 1960 presidential campaign to the president's state funeral, titled A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, which won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
Schlesinger in 1961
BornArthur Bancroft Schlesinger
(1917-10-15)October 15, 1917
Columbus, Ohio, U.S.
DiedFebruary 28, 2007(2007-02-28) (aged 89)
New York City, U.S.
OccupationHistorian, writer
Alma materHarvard University (AB)
Peterhouse, Cambridge
Period1939–2007
SubjectPolitics, social issues, history
Literary movementAmerican liberal theory
Notable awardsPulitzer Prize (1946, 1966)
National Humanities Medal (1998)
Spouse
(m. 1940; div. 1970)

Alexandra Emmet Allan
(m. 1971)
Children5

In 1968, Schlesinger actively supported the presidential campaign of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, which ended with Kennedy's assassination in Los Angeles. Schlesinger wrote a popular biography, Robert Kennedy and His Times, several years later. He later popularized the term "imperial presidency" during the Nixon administration in his 1973 book, The Imperial Presidency.

Early life and career edit

Schlesinger was born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of Elizabeth Harriet (née Bancroft) and Arthur M. Schlesinger (1888–1965), who was an influential social historian at Ohio State University and Harvard University, where he directed many PhD dissertations in American history.[4] His paternal grandfather was a Prussian Jew who converted to Protestantism and then married an Austrian Catholic.[5] His mother, a Mayflower descendant, was of German and New England ancestry, as well as a relative of historian George Bancroft, according to family tradition.[6] His family practiced Unitarianism.

Schlesinger attended the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and received his first degree at the age of 20 from Harvard College, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1938.[7] After spending the 1938–1939 academic year at Peterhouse, Cambridge, as a Henry Fellow, he was appointed to a three-year Junior Fellowship in the Harvard Society of Fellows in the fall of 1939.[8] At the time, Fellows were not allowed to pursue advanced degrees, "a requirement intended to keep them off the standard academic treadmill"; as such, Schlesinger would never earn a doctorate.[7] His fellowship was interrupted by the United States entering World War II. After failing his military medical examination, Schlesinger joined the Office of War Information. From 1943 to 1945, he served as an intelligence analyst in the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA.[9]

Schlesinger's service in the OSS allowed him time to complete his first Pulitzer Prize–winning book, The Age of Jackson, in 1945. From 1946 to 1954, he was an associate professor at Harvard, becoming a full professor in 1954.

Political activities before 1960 edit

In 1947, Schlesinger, together with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Minneapolis mayor and future Senator and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, economist and longtime friend John Kenneth Galbraith, and Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr,[10] founded Americans for Democratic Action. Schlesinger acted as the ADA's national chairman from 1953 to 1954.

After President Harry S. Truman announced he would not run for a second full term in the 1952 presidential election, Schlesinger became the primary speechwriter for and an ardent supporter of Governor Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois. In the 1956 election, Schlesinger, along with 30-year-old Robert F. Kennedy, again worked on Stevenson's campaign staff. Schlesinger supported the nomination of Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy as Stevenson's vice-presidential running mate, but at the Democratic convention, Kennedy came second in the vice-presidential balloting, losing to Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee.

Schlesinger had known John F. Kennedy since attending Harvard and increasingly socialized with Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline in the 1950s. In 1954, The Boston Post publisher John Fox Jr. planned a series of newspaper pieces labeling several Harvard figures, including Schlesinger, as "reds"; Kennedy intervened on Schlesinger's behalf, which Schlesinger recounted in A Thousand Days.

During the 1960 campaign, Schlesinger supported Kennedy, causing consternation to Stevenson loyalists. Kennedy campaigned actively but Stevenson refused to run unless he was drafted at the convention. After Kennedy won the nomination, Schlesinger helped the campaign as a sometime speechwriter, speaker, and member of the ADA. He also wrote the book Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference? in which he lauded Kennedy's abilities and scorned Vice President Richard M. Nixon as having "no ideas, only methods.... He cares about winning."[11]

Kennedy administration edit

After the election, the president-elect offered Schlesinger an ambassadorship and Assistant Secretary of State for Cultural Relations before Robert Kennedy proposed that Schlesinger serve as a "sort of roving reporter and troubleshooter." Schlesinger quickly accepted, and on January 30, 1961, he resigned from Harvard and was appointed Special Assistant to the President. He worked primarily on Latin American affairs and as a speechwriter during his tenure in the White House.

 
Schlesinger watching flight of Mercury-Redstone 3 with President Kennedy, Vice President Johnson, Jackie Kennedy, and Admiral Arleigh Burke in the White House Office of the President's Secretary, May 5, 1961

In February 1961, Schlesinger was first told of the "Cuba operation," which would eventually become the Bay of Pigs Invasion. He opposed the plan in a memorandum to the president: "at one stroke you would dissipate all the extraordinary good will which has been rising toward the new Administration through the world. It would fix a malevolent image of the new Administration in the minds of millions."[12] He, however, suggested:

Would it not be possible to induce Castro to take offensive action first? He has already launched expeditions against Panama and against the Dominican Republic. One can conceive a black operation in, say, Haiti which might in time lure Castro into sending a few boatloads of men on to a Haitian beach in what could be portrayed as an effort to overthrow the Haitian regime. If only Castro could be induced to commit an offensive act, then the moral issue would be butted, and the anti-US campaign would be hobbled from the start.[13]

During the Cabinet deliberations, he "shrank into a chair at the far end of the table and listened in silence" as the Joint Chiefs and CIA representatives lobbied the president for an invasion. Along with his friend, Senator William Fulbright, Schlesinger sent several memos to the president opposing the strike;[14] however, during the meetings, he held back his opinion, reluctant to undermine the President's desire for a unanimous decision. Following the overt failure of the invasion, Schlesinger later lamented, "In the months after the Bay of Pigs, I bitterly reproached myself for having kept so silent during those crucial discussions in the cabinet room. ... I can only explain my failure to do more than raise a few timid questions by reporting that one's impulse to blow the whistle on this nonsense was simply undone by the circumstances of the discussion."[15] After the furor died down, Kennedy joked that Schlesinger "wrote me a memorandum that will look pretty good when he gets around to writing his book on my administration. Only he better not publish that memorandum while I'm still alive!"[12] During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Schlesinger was not a member of the executive committee of the National Security Council (EXCOMM) but helped UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson draft his presentation of the crisis to the UN Security Council.

In October 1962, Schlesinger became afraid of "a tremendous advantage", which "all-out Soviet commitment to cybernetics" would provide the Soviets.[16] Schlesinger further warned that "by 1970 the USSR may have a radically new production technology, involving total enterprises or complexes of industries, managed by closed-loop, feedback control employing self-teaching computers". The cause was a pre-vision of an algorithmic governance of economy by an internet-like computer network authored by Soviet scientists, particularly Alexander Kharkevich.[17][18]

After President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, Schlesinger resigned his position in January 1964. He wrote a memoir/history of the Kennedy administration, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, which won him his second Pulitzer Prize in 1965.

Later career edit

 
Schlesinger in his NYC office, 1988

Schlesinger returned to teaching in 1966 as the Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center. After his retirement from teaching in 1994, he remained an active member of the Graduate Center community as an emeritus professor until his death.

Later politics edit

After his service for the Kennedy administration, he continued to be a Kennedy loyalist for the rest of his life, campaigning for Robert Kennedy's tragic presidential campaign in 1968 and for Senator Edward M. Kennedy in 1980. At the request of Robert Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy, he wrote the biography Robert Kennedy and His Times, which was published in 1978.[19]

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he criticized Richard Nixon as a candidate and as president. His prominent status as a liberal Democrat and outspoken disdain of Nixon led to his placement on the master list of Nixon's political opponents. Ironically, Nixon would become his next-door neighbor in the years following the Watergate scandal.

After retiring from teaching, he remained involved in politics through his books and public speaking tours. Schlesinger was a critic of the Clinton Administration, resisting President Clinton's cooptation of his "Vital Center" concept in an article for Slate in 1997.[20] Schlesinger was also a critic of the 2003 Iraq War, calling it a misadventure. He blamed the media for not covering a reasoned case against the war.[21]

Personal life edit

Schlesinger's name at birth was Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; since his mid-teens, he had instead used the signature Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.[22] He had five children, four from his first marriage to author and artist Marian Cannon Schlesinger and a son and stepson from his second marriage to Alexandra Emmet, also an artist:[23]

  • Stephen Schlesinger (b. 1942), a notable author of books on foreign affairs and former director of the World Policy Institute[24]
  • Katharine Kinderman (1942–2004), an author and producer, who was married to Gibbs Kinderman and later Thomas Tiffany[24]
  • Christina Schlesinger (b. 1946), a prominent artist and muralist[24]
  • Andrew Schlesinger, writer and editor[24]
  • Robert Schlesinger, writer and editor[24]

Career edit

Education edit

World War II service edit

Educator edit

Democratic Party activist edit

Death edit

On February 28, 2007, Schlesinger had a heart attack while dining with family at a steakhouse in Manhattan. He was taken to New York Downtown Hospital, where he died at the age of 89. His New York Times obituary described him as a "historian of power."[7] He is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[25]

Works edit

He won a Pulitzer Prize for History in 1946 for his book The Age of Jackson, covering the intellectual environment of Jacksonian democracy.

His 1949 book The Vital Center made a case for the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and was harshly critical of both unregulated capitalism and of those liberals such as Henry A. Wallace who advocated coexistence with communism.

In his book The Politics of Hope (1962), Schlesinger terms conservatives the "party of the past" and liberals "the party of hope" and calls for overcoming the division between both parties.[26]

He won a second Pulitzer in the Biography category in 1966 for A Thousand Days.

His 1986 book The Cycles of American History, a collection of essays and articles, contains "The Cycles of American Politics," an early work on the topic; it was influenced by his father's work on cycles.

He became a leading opponent of multiculturalism in the 1980s and articulated this stance in his book The Disuniting of America (1991).

Published posthumously in 2007, Journals 1952–2000 is the 894-page distillation of 6,000 pages of Schlesinger diaries on a wide variety of subjects, edited by Andrew and Stephen Schlesinger.[27]

Selected bibliography edit

This is a partial listing of Schlesinger's published works:

Articles edit

  • "The Future of Socialism". Partisan Review, May/June 1947.[28]
  • "The Crisis of American Masculinity" Esquire, November 1958.
  • "The Many Faces of Communism, Part 1: The Theological Society". Harper's Magazine, January 1960.
  • "Origins of the Cold War". Foreign Affairs, Vol. 46, No. 1, October 1967.
  • "Against Academic Apartheid". The Social Contract, Vol. 1, No. 1, Inaugural Issue, Fall 1990.

Books edit

  • 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?
  • 1962 The Politics of Hope
  • 1963 Paths of American Thought (ed. with Morton White)
  • 1965 A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
  • 1965 The MacArthur Controversy and American Foreign Policy
  • 1967 The 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 – reissued in 1989 (with epilogue) and 2004
  • 1978 Robert Kennedy and His Times – adapted into a 1985 TV miniseries
  • 1983 Creativity in Statecraft
  • 1983 The Almanac of American History – revised edition, 2004
  • 1986 The Cycles of American History
  • 1988 JFK Remembered
  • 1988 War and the Constitution: Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt
  • 1988 Cleopatra, New York: Chelsea House, ( Hoobler, Dorothy; Hoobler, Thomas; introductory essay "On leadership" by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. )
  • 1990 Is the Cold War Over?
  • 1991 The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society
  • 2000 20th Century Day by Day: 100 Years Of News From January 1, 1900, to December 31, 1999
  • 2000 A Life in the 20th Century, Innocent Beginnings, 1917–1950
  • 2004 War and the American Presidency
  • 2007 Journals 1952–2000
  • 2011 Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F Kennedy (Mrs. Kennedy's interview shortly after her husband's assassination)

Besides writing biographies he also wrote a foreword to a book on Vladimir Putin which came out in 2003 under the same name and was published by Chelsea House Publishers.[29]

Schlesinger's papers will be available at the New York Public Library.[30]

Awards edit

See also edit

Footnotes edit

  1. ^ Roberts, Sam (October 17, 2017). "Marian Cannon Schlesinger, Author and Eyewitness to History, Dies at 105". The New York Times. Retrieved November 25, 2020.
  2. ^ Martin, John Bartlow (1976), Adlai Stevenson of Illinois: The Life of Adlai E. Stevenson, pp. 630–643
  3. ^ Tanenhaus, Sam (March 4, 2007). "Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. – History, Written in the Present Tense". The New York Times. Retrieved October 10, 2008.
  4. ^ "WOSU Presents Ohioana Authors, Arthur Schlesinger Jr". Ohioana Authors. WOSU. 2006. from the original on September 7, 2006. Retrieved September 5, 2006.
  5. ^ Herman, Arthur (March 2001). "A Life in the Twentieth Century, by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr". Commentary. Retrieved December 20, 2011.
  6. ^ Chace, James (December 21, 2000). "The Age of Schlesinger by James Chace". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved December 20, 2011.
  7. ^ a b c Douglas Martin (March 2, 2007). "Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., a Partisan Historian of Power, Is Dead at 89". The New York Times. from the original on December 10, 2008.
  8. ^ . Archived from the original on January 16, 2013. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
  9. ^ Schlesinger, Robert (August 20, 2008). "Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s Not-So-Secret Career as a Spy: My father's OSS records reveal no James Bond, but a World War II career like so many others". U.S. News & World Report. from the original on September 27, 2008. Retrieved September 11, 2008.
  10. ^ Fox, Richard Wightman (1985). Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography. Pantheon Books.
  11. ^ Greenberg, David (2003). Nixon's shadow: the history of an image – David Greenberg – Google Books. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393048964. from the original on January 11, 2014. Retrieved December 20, 2011.
  12. ^ a b A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
  13. ^ "Cuba, 1961–1962". Foreign Relations of the United States 1961–1963. United States Department of State. 1997.
  14. ^ The New York Public Library. "NYPL Acquires Papers of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr". Nypl.org. Retrieved December 20, 2011.
  15. ^ Howard Zinn (1997). The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy. Seven Stories Press. ISBN 9781888363548. from the original on November 13, 2012. Retrieved February 11, 2009.
  16. ^ Gerovitch, Slava (April 9, 2015). . Nautilus. Archived from the original on September 22, 2021. Retrieved September 19, 2021.
  17. ^ "Machine of communism. Why the USSR did not create the Internet". csef.ru (in Russian). Retrieved March 21, 2020.
  18. ^ Kharkevich, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich (1973). Theory of information. The identification of the images. Selected works in three volumes. Volume 3. Information and technology: Moscow: Publishing House "Nauka", 1973. - Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Institute of information transmission problems. pp. 495–508.
  19. ^ Wills, Gary (November 12, 1978). "Fierce in His Loyalties and Enmities". The New York Times. Retrieved February 21, 2015.
  20. ^ Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (January 10, 1997). "It's My Vital Center". Slate. Retrieved September 23, 2017.
  21. ^ Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (March 23, 2003). "Good Foreign Policy a Casualty of War; Today, it is we Americans who live in infamy". Los Angeles Times. from the original on March 3, 2007. Retrieved January 31, 2012.
  22. ^ Schlesinger 2000, pp. 6–7 and 57).
  23. ^ "Mrs. Alexandra E. Allan Wed to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr". The New York Times. July 13, 1971. from the original on April 10, 2009.
  24. ^ a b c d e Sanchez, Theresa (September 30, 2004). "Katharine Kinderman; author, producer had sense of adventure". The Boston Globe. Retrieved April 3, 2016.
  25. ^ "Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr at Mount Auburn Cemetery Map - Remember My Journey". www.remembermyjourney.com. Retrieved February 9, 2019.
  26. ^ "Liberalism in America: A Note for Europeans". Writing University of Pennsylvania. August 2, 2004. from the original on March 3, 2007. Retrieved October 28, 2010.
  27. ^ Dowd, Maureen (October 7, 2007). "Social Historian". The New York Times. Retrieved October 7, 2007.
  28. ^ McDonald, Larry (1983). Interview by Patrick J. Buchanan and Tom Braden. CNN Crossfire.
  29. ^ Charles J. Shields (2003). Vladimir Putin. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7910-6945-5.
  30. ^ Pogrebin, Robin (November 26, 2007). "New York Public Library Buys Schlesinger Papers". The New York Times. from the original on April 24, 2014.
  31. ^ "Past winners and finalists by category". The Pulitzer Prizes. from the original on March 3, 2007. Retrieved March 17, 2012.
  32. ^ "Arthur Schlesinger". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved May 9, 2022.
  33. ^ "National Book Awards – 1966". National Book Foundation. from the original on October 9, 2007. Retrieved March 17, 2012.
  34. ^ "Biography or Autobiography: Past winners and finalists by category". The Pulitzer Prizes. from the original on May 6, 2009. Retrieved March 17, 2012.
  35. ^ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
  36. ^ . National Book Foundation. Archived from the original on June 17, 2007. Retrieved March 17, 2012.
  37. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved May 9, 2022.
  38. ^ Schwartz, Thomas A. (September 6, 2018). "Richard Aldous. Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian" (PDF). International Security Studies Forum. p. 2. Reinhold Niebuhr was one of the great intellectual influences on Schlesinger, and to the extent that Schlesinger possessed a foreign policy vision, it reflected the cautious realism and greater humility that Niebuhr wanted superpower America to reflect.

Further reading edit

  • Aldous, Richard. Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian (W.W. Norton, 2017) online book review
  • Diggins, John Patrick, ed. The Liberal Persuasion: Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and the Challenge of the American Past, Princeton UP, 1997. online free
  • Feller, Daniel, "Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.," in Robert Allen Rutland, ed. Clio's Favorites: Leading Historians of the United States, 1945–2000 U of Missouri Press, 2000; pp. 156–169.
  • Martin, John Bartlow. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. New York: Doubleday. 1976.
  • Thomas Meaney, "The Hagiography Factory" (review of Richard Aldous, Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian, Norton, 486 pp., ISBN 978 0 393 24470 0), London Review of Books, vol. 40, no. 3 (8 February 2018), pp. 13–15. "Aldous has chosen an apt subtitle for his biography: Schlesinger was an 'imperial' historian in his willingness to take up the burden of the American empire's PR, though 'The Imperious Publicist' would have served just as well." (p. 14)
  • Sue Saunders, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum, February 15, 2006.
  • John William Ward 1955. Andrew Jackson, Symbol for an Age. New York: Oxford University Press
  • Wilentz, Sean, "The High Table Liberal" (review of Richard Aldous, Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian, Norton, 486 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXV, no. 2 (8 February 2018), pp. 31–33. "[T]he subtitle of Richard Aldous's otherwise solid biography is... erroneous. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was in no way an 'imperial' historian; he was an anti-imperial historian." (p. 31)

Primary sources edit

  • Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. A Thousand days: John F Kennedy in the White House. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1965.
  • Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917–1950. (2000), autobiography, vol 1.
  • Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. Journals: 1952–2000 (2007)

External links edit

  • Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. papers 1922–2007, held by the Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library
  • Appearances on C-SPAN
    • In Depth interview with Schlesinger, December 3, 2000
  • Eisler, Kim. "Arthur Schlesinger Dishes Dirt", Washingtonian, March 6, 2008.
  • The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and "court philosopher" of the Kennedy administration was 89 when he died.
  • The Washington Post obituary[dead link]
  • A film clip The Open Mind – A life in the 20th Century (September 27, 2007) is available for viewing at the Internet Archive
  • A film clip The Open Mind – A Life in the 20th Century (cont'd) (September 27, 2007) is available for viewing at the Internet Archive
  • Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. at Library of Congress, with 156 library catalog records
  • Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. at Find a Grave  

arthur, schlesinger, arthur, meier, schlesinger, shless, jər, born, arthur, bancroft, schlesinger, october, 1917, february, 2007, american, historian, social, critic, public, intellectual, influential, historian, arthur, schlesinger, specialist, american, hist. Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr ˈ ʃ l ɛ s ɪ n dʒ er SHLESS in jer born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger October 15 1917 February 28 2007 was an American historian social critic and public intellectual The son of the influential historian Arthur M Schlesinger Sr and a specialist in American history much of Schlesinger s work explored the history of 20th century American liberalism In particular his work focused on leaders such as Harry S Truman Franklin D Roosevelt John F Kennedy and Robert F Kennedy In the 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns he was a primary speechwriter and adviser to the Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson II 2 Schlesinger served as special assistant and court historian 3 to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963 He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy administration from the 1960 presidential campaign to the president s state funeral titled A Thousand Days John F Kennedy in the White House which won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography Arthur M Schlesinger Jr Schlesinger in 1961BornArthur Bancroft Schlesinger 1917 10 15 October 15 1917Columbus Ohio U S DiedFebruary 28 2007 2007 02 28 aged 89 New York City U S OccupationHistorian writerAlma materHarvard University AB Peterhouse CambridgePeriod1939 2007SubjectPolitics social issues historyLiterary movementAmerican liberal theoryNotable awardsPulitzer Prize 1946 1966 National Humanities Medal 1998 SpouseMarian Cannon 1 m 1940 div 1970 wbr Alexandra Emmet Allan m 1971 wbr Children5In 1968 Schlesinger actively supported the presidential campaign of Senator Robert F Kennedy which ended with Kennedy s assassination in Los Angeles Schlesinger wrote a popular biography Robert Kennedy and His Times several years later He later popularized the term imperial presidency during the Nixon administration in his 1973 book The Imperial Presidency Contents 1 Early life and career 2 Political activities before 1960 3 Kennedy administration 4 Later career 5 Later politics 6 Personal life 7 Career 7 1 Education 7 2 World War II service 7 3 Educator 7 4 Democratic Party activist 8 Death 9 Works 10 Selected bibliography 10 1 Articles 10 2 Books 11 Awards 12 See also 13 Footnotes 14 Further reading 14 1 Primary sources 15 External linksEarly life and career editSchlesinger was born in Columbus Ohio the son of Elizabeth Harriet nee Bancroft and Arthur M Schlesinger 1888 1965 who was an influential social historian at Ohio State University and Harvard University where he directed many PhD dissertations in American history 4 His paternal grandfather was a Prussian Jew who converted to Protestantism and then married an Austrian Catholic 5 His mother a Mayflower descendant was of German and New England ancestry as well as a relative of historian George Bancroft according to family tradition 6 His family practiced Unitarianism Schlesinger attended the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and received his first degree at the age of 20 from Harvard College where he graduated summa cum laude in 1938 7 After spending the 1938 1939 academic year at Peterhouse Cambridge as a Henry Fellow he was appointed to a three year Junior Fellowship in the Harvard Society of Fellows in the fall of 1939 8 At the time Fellows were not allowed to pursue advanced degrees a requirement intended to keep them off the standard academic treadmill as such Schlesinger would never earn a doctorate 7 His fellowship was interrupted by the United States entering World War II After failing his military medical examination Schlesinger joined the Office of War Information From 1943 to 1945 he served as an intelligence analyst in the Office of Strategic Services the precursor to the CIA 9 Schlesinger s service in the OSS allowed him time to complete his first Pulitzer Prize winning book The Age of Jackson in 1945 From 1946 to 1954 he was an associate professor at Harvard becoming a full professor in 1954 Political activities before 1960 editIn 1947 Schlesinger together with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt Minneapolis mayor and future Senator and Vice President Hubert Humphrey economist and longtime friend John Kenneth Galbraith and Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr 10 founded Americans for Democratic Action Schlesinger acted as the ADA s national chairman from 1953 to 1954 After President Harry S Truman announced he would not run for a second full term in the 1952 presidential election Schlesinger became the primary speechwriter for and an ardent supporter of Governor Adlai E Stevenson of Illinois In the 1956 election Schlesinger along with 30 year old Robert F Kennedy again worked on Stevenson s campaign staff Schlesinger supported the nomination of Massachusetts Senator John F Kennedy as Stevenson s vice presidential running mate but at the Democratic convention Kennedy came second in the vice presidential balloting losing to Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee Schlesinger had known John F Kennedy since attending Harvard and increasingly socialized with Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline in the 1950s In 1954 The Boston Post publisher John Fox Jr planned a series of newspaper pieces labeling several Harvard figures including Schlesinger as reds Kennedy intervened on Schlesinger s behalf which Schlesinger recounted in A Thousand Days During the 1960 campaign Schlesinger supported Kennedy causing consternation to Stevenson loyalists Kennedy campaigned actively but Stevenson refused to run unless he was drafted at the convention After Kennedy won the nomination Schlesinger helped the campaign as a sometime speechwriter speaker and member of the ADA He also wrote the book Kennedy or Nixon Does It Make Any Difference in which he lauded Kennedy s abilities and scorned Vice President Richard M Nixon as having no ideas only methods He cares about winning 11 Kennedy administration editAfter the election the president elect offered Schlesinger an ambassadorship and Assistant Secretary of State for Cultural Relations before Robert Kennedy proposed that Schlesinger serve as a sort of roving reporter and troubleshooter Schlesinger quickly accepted and on January 30 1961 he resigned from Harvard and was appointed Special Assistant to the President He worked primarily on Latin American affairs and as a speechwriter during his tenure in the White House nbsp Schlesinger watching flight of Mercury Redstone 3 with President Kennedy Vice President Johnson Jackie Kennedy and Admiral Arleigh Burke in the White House Office of the President s Secretary May 5 1961In February 1961 Schlesinger was first told of the Cuba operation which would eventually become the Bay of Pigs Invasion He opposed the plan in a memorandum to the president at one stroke you would dissipate all the extraordinary good will which has been rising toward the new Administration through the world It would fix a malevolent image of the new Administration in the minds of millions 12 He however suggested Would it not be possible to induce Castro to take offensive action first He has already launched expeditions against Panama and against the Dominican Republic One can conceive a black operation in say Haiti which might in time lure Castro into sending a few boatloads of men on to a Haitian beach in what could be portrayed as an effort to overthrow the Haitian regime If only Castro could be induced to commit an offensive act then the moral issue would be butted and the anti US campaign would be hobbled from the start 13 During the Cabinet deliberations he shrank into a chair at the far end of the table and listened in silence as the Joint Chiefs and CIA representatives lobbied the president for an invasion Along with his friend Senator William Fulbright Schlesinger sent several memos to the president opposing the strike 14 however during the meetings he held back his opinion reluctant to undermine the President s desire for a unanimous decision Following the overt failure of the invasion Schlesinger later lamented In the months after the Bay of Pigs I bitterly reproached myself for having kept so silent during those crucial discussions in the cabinet room I can only explain my failure to do more than raise a few timid questions by reporting that one s impulse to blow the whistle on this nonsense was simply undone by the circumstances of the discussion 15 After the furor died down Kennedy joked that Schlesinger wrote me a memorandum that will look pretty good when he gets around to writing his book on my administration Only he better not publish that memorandum while I m still alive 12 During the Cuban Missile Crisis Schlesinger was not a member of the executive committee of the National Security Council EXCOMM but helped UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson draft his presentation of the crisis to the UN Security Council In October 1962 Schlesinger became afraid of a tremendous advantage which all out Soviet commitment to cybernetics would provide the Soviets 16 Schlesinger further warned that by 1970 the USSR may have a radically new production technology involving total enterprises or complexes of industries managed by closed loop feedback control employing self teaching computers The cause was a pre vision of an algorithmic governance of economy by an internet like computer network authored by Soviet scientists particularly Alexander Kharkevich 17 18 After President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22 1963 Schlesinger resigned his position in January 1964 He wrote a memoir history of the Kennedy administration A Thousand Days John F Kennedy in the White House which won him his second Pulitzer Prize in 1965 Later career edit nbsp Schlesinger in his NYC office 1988Schlesinger returned to teaching in 1966 as the Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center After his retirement from teaching in 1994 he remained an active member of the Graduate Center community as an emeritus professor until his death Later politics editAfter his service for the Kennedy administration he continued to be a Kennedy loyalist for the rest of his life campaigning for Robert Kennedy s tragic presidential campaign in 1968 and for Senator Edward M Kennedy in 1980 At the request of Robert Kennedy s widow Ethel Kennedy he wrote the biography Robert Kennedy and His Times which was published in 1978 19 Throughout the 1960s and 1970s he criticized Richard Nixon as a candidate and as president His prominent status as a liberal Democrat and outspoken disdain of Nixon led to his placement on the master list of Nixon s political opponents Ironically Nixon would become his next door neighbor in the years following the Watergate scandal After retiring from teaching he remained involved in politics through his books and public speaking tours Schlesinger was a critic of the Clinton Administration resisting President Clinton s cooptation of his Vital Center concept in an article for Slate in 1997 20 Schlesinger was also a critic of the 2003 Iraq War calling it a misadventure He blamed the media for not covering a reasoned case against the war 21 Personal life editSchlesinger s name at birth was Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger since his mid teens he had instead used the signature Arthur M Schlesinger Jr 22 He had five children four from his first marriage to author and artist Marian Cannon Schlesinger and a son and stepson from his second marriage to Alexandra Emmet also an artist 23 Stephen Schlesinger b 1942 a notable author of books on foreign affairs and former director of the World Policy Institute 24 Katharine Kinderman 1942 2004 an author and producer who was married to Gibbs Kinderman and later Thomas Tiffany 24 Christina Schlesinger b 1946 a prominent artist and muralist 24 Andrew Schlesinger writer and editor 24 Robert Schlesinger writer and editor 24 Career editEducation edit 1933 Phillips Exeter Academy 1938 A B summa cum laude Harvard University 1938 1939 Henry Fellow Peterhouse Cambridge 1939 1942 Society of Fellows Harvard UniversityWorld War II service edit 1942 1943 Office of War Information 1943 1945 Office of Strategic ServicesEducator edit 1946 1954 Associate Professor of History Harvard University 1954 1962 Professor of History Harvard University 1966 Visiting Fellow Institute for Advanced Study Princeton New Jersey 1966 1994 Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities CUNY Graduate Center Emeritus 1994 2007 Democratic Party activist edit Among the founders of Americans for Democratic Action Speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson s two presidential campaigns in 1952 and 1956 Speechwriter for John F Kennedy s campaign in 1960 1961 1964 Special Assistant to the President for Latin American affairs and speechwriting Speechwriter for Robert F Kennedy s campaign in 1968 Speechwriter for George McGovern s campaign in 1972 Active in the presidential campaign of Ted Kennedy in 1980Death editOn February 28 2007 Schlesinger had a heart attack while dining with family at a steakhouse in Manhattan He was taken to New York Downtown Hospital where he died at the age of 89 His New York Times obituary described him as a historian of power 7 He is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge Massachusetts 25 Works editHe won a Pulitzer Prize for History in 1946 for his book The Age of Jackson covering the intellectual environment of Jacksonian democracy His 1949 book The Vital Center made a case for the New Deal policies of Franklin D Roosevelt and was harshly critical of both unregulated capitalism and of those liberals such as Henry A Wallace who advocated coexistence with communism In his book The Politics of Hope 1962 Schlesinger terms conservatives the party of the past and liberals the party of hope and calls for overcoming the division between both parties 26 He won a second Pulitzer in the Biography category in 1966 for A Thousand Days His 1986 book The Cycles of American History a collection of essays and articles contains The Cycles of American Politics an early work on the topic it was influenced by his father s work on cycles He became a leading opponent of multiculturalism in the 1980s and articulated this stance in his book The Disuniting of America 1991 Published posthumously in 2007 Journals 1952 2000 is the 894 page distillation of 6 000 pages of Schlesinger diaries on a wide variety of subjects edited by Andrew and Stephen Schlesinger 27 Selected bibliography editThis is a partial listing of Schlesinger s published works Articles edit The Future of Socialism Partisan Review May June 1947 28 The Crisis of American Masculinity Esquire November 1958 The Many Faces of Communism Part 1 The Theological Society Harper s Magazine January 1960 Origins of the Cold War Foreign Affairs Vol 46 No 1 October 1967 Against Academic Apartheid The Social Contract Vol 1 No 1 Inaugural Issue Fall 1990 Books edit 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 1962 The Politics of Hope 1963 Paths of American Thought ed with Morton White 1965 A Thousand Days John F Kennedy in the White House 1965 The MacArthur Controversy and American Foreign Policy 1967 The 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 reissued in 1989 with epilogue and 2004 1978 Robert Kennedy and His Times adapted into a 1985 TV miniseries 1983 Creativity in Statecraft 1983 The Almanac of American History revised edition 2004 1986 The Cycles of American History 1988 JFK Remembered 1988 War and the Constitution Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D Roosevelt 1988 Cleopatra New York Chelsea House Hoobler Dorothy Hoobler Thomas introductory essay On leadership by Arthur M Schlesinger Jr 1990 Is the Cold War Over 1991 The Disuniting of America Reflections on a Multicultural Society 2000 20th Century Day by Day 100 Years Of News From January 1 1900 to December 31 1999 2000 A Life in the 20th Century Innocent Beginnings 1917 1950 2004 War and the American Presidency 2007 Journals 1952 2000 2011 Jacqueline Kennedy Historic Conversations on Life With John F Kennedy Mrs Kennedy s interview shortly after her husband s assassination Besides writing biographies he also wrote a foreword to a book on Vladimir Putin which came out in 2003 under the same name and was published by Chelsea House Publishers 29 Schlesinger s papers will be available at the New York Public Library 30 Awards edit1946 Pulitzer Prize for History The Age of Jackson 31 1955 Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 32 1958 Bancroft Prize The Crisis of the Old Order 1958 Francis Parkman Prize The Crisis of the Old Order 1966 National Book Award in History and Biography A Thousand Days 33 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Biography A Thousand Days 34 1978 Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement 35 1979 National Book Award in Biography Robert Kennedy and His Times 36 1987 Elected member of the American Philosophical Society 37 1998 National Humanities Medal 2003 Four Freedoms Award 2006 Paul Peck Award 2006 Niebuhr Medal Awarded by Elmhurst College to an individual who exemplifies the ideals of Reinhold and H Richard Niebuhr Schlesinger was greatly influenced by Reinhold Niebuhr 38 See also editPolitical history in the United States for historiographyFootnotes edit Roberts Sam October 17 2017 Marian Cannon Schlesinger Author and Eyewitness to History Dies at 105 The New York Times Retrieved November 25 2020 Martin John Bartlow 1976 Adlai Stevenson of Illinois The Life of Adlai E Stevenson pp 630 643 Tanenhaus Sam March 4 2007 Arthur M Schlesinger Jr History Written in the Present Tense The New York Times Retrieved October 10 2008 WOSU Presents Ohioana Authors Arthur Schlesinger Jr Ohioana Authors WOSU 2006 Archived from the original on September 7 2006 Retrieved September 5 2006 Herman Arthur March 2001 A Life in the Twentieth Century by Arthur M Schlesinger Jr Commentary Retrieved December 20 2011 Chace James December 21 2000 The Age of Schlesinger by James Chace The New York Review of Books Retrieved December 20 2011 a b c Douglas Martin March 2 2007 Arthur M Schlesinger Jr a Partisan Historian of Power Is Dead at 89 The New York Times Archived from the original on December 10 2008 Current and Former Term Archived from the original on January 16 2013 Retrieved January 16 2013 Schlesinger Robert August 20 2008 Arthur Schlesinger Jr s Not So Secret Career as a Spy My father s OSS records reveal no James Bond but a World War II career like so many others U S News amp World Report Archived from the original on September 27 2008 Retrieved September 11 2008 Fox Richard Wightman 1985 Reinhold Niebuhr A Biography Pantheon Books Greenberg David 2003 Nixon s shadow the history of an image David Greenberg Google Books W W Norton amp Company ISBN 9780393048964 Archived from the original on January 11 2014 Retrieved December 20 2011 a b A Thousand Days John F Kennedy in the White House Arthur M Schlesinger Jr Cuba 1961 1962 Foreign Relations of the United States 1961 1963 United States Department of State 1997 The New York Public Library NYPL Acquires Papers of Arthur M Schlesinger Jr Nypl org Retrieved December 20 2011 Howard Zinn 1997 The Zinn Reader Writings on Disobedience and Democracy Seven Stories Press ISBN 9781888363548 Archived from the original on November 13 2012 Retrieved February 11 2009 Gerovitch Slava April 9 2015 How the Computer Got Its Revenge on the Soviet Union Nautilus Archived from the original on September 22 2021 Retrieved September 19 2021 Machine of communism Why the USSR did not create the Internet csef ru in Russian Retrieved March 21 2020 Kharkevich Aleksandr Aleksandrovich 1973 Theory of information The identification of the images Selected works in three volumes Volume 3 Information and technology Moscow Publishing House Nauka 1973 Academy of Sciences of the USSR Institute of information transmission problems pp 495 508 Wills Gary November 12 1978 Fierce in His Loyalties and Enmities The New York Times Retrieved February 21 2015 Arthur Schlesinger Jr January 10 1997 It s My Vital Center Slate Retrieved September 23 2017 Arthur Schlesinger Jr March 23 2003 Good Foreign Policy a Casualty of War Today it is we Americans who live in infamy Los Angeles Times Archived from the original on March 3 2007 Retrieved January 31 2012 Schlesinger 2000 pp 6 7 and 57 Mrs Alexandra E Allan Wed to Arthur M Schlesinger Jr The New York Times July 13 1971 Archived from the original on April 10 2009 a b c d e Sanchez Theresa September 30 2004 Katharine Kinderman author producer had sense of adventure The Boston Globe Retrieved April 3 2016 Arthur M Schlesinger Jr at Mount Auburn Cemetery Map Remember My Journey www remembermyjourney com Retrieved February 9 2019 Liberalism in America A Note for Europeans Writing University of Pennsylvania August 2 2004 Archived from the original on March 3 2007 Retrieved October 28 2010 Dowd Maureen October 7 2007 Social Historian The New York Times Retrieved October 7 2007 McDonald Larry 1983 Interview by Patrick J Buchanan and Tom Braden CNN Crossfire Charles J Shields 2003 Vladimir Putin Philadelphia Chelsea House Publishers ISBN 978 0 7910 6945 5 Pogrebin Robin November 26 2007 New York Public Library Buys Schlesinger Papers The New York Times Archived from the original on April 24 2014 Past winners and finalists by category The Pulitzer Prizes Archived from the original on March 3 2007 Retrieved March 17 2012 Arthur Schlesinger American Academy of Arts amp Sciences Retrieved May 9 2022 National Book Awards 1966 National Book Foundation Archived from the original on October 9 2007 Retrieved March 17 2012 Biography or Autobiography Past winners and finalists by category The Pulitzer Prizes Archived from the original on May 6 2009 Retrieved March 17 2012 Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement www achievement org American Academy of Achievement National Book Awards 1979 National Book Foundation Archived from the original on June 17 2007 Retrieved March 17 2012 APS Member History search amphilsoc org Retrieved May 9 2022 Schwartz Thomas A September 6 2018 Richard Aldous Schlesinger The Imperial Historian PDF International Security Studies Forum p 2 Reinhold Niebuhr was one of the great intellectual influences on Schlesinger and to the extent that Schlesinger possessed a foreign policy vision it reflected the cautious realism and greater humility that Niebuhr wanted superpower America to reflect Further reading editAldous Richard Schlesinger The Imperial Historian W W Norton 2017 online book review Diggins John Patrick ed The Liberal Persuasion Arthur Schlesinger Jr and the Challenge of the American Past Princeton UP 1997 online free Feller Daniel Arthur M Schlesinger Jr in Robert Allen Rutland ed Clio s Favorites Leading Historians of the United States 1945 2000 U of Missouri Press 2000 pp 156 169 Martin John Bartlow Adlai Stevenson of Illinois New York Doubleday 1976 Thomas Meaney The Hagiography Factory review of Richard Aldous Schlesinger The Imperial Historian Norton 486 pp ISBN 978 0 393 24470 0 London Review of Books vol 40 no 3 8 February 2018 pp 13 15 Aldous has chosen an apt subtitle for his biography Schlesinger was an imperial historian in his willingness to take up the burden of the American empire s PR though The Imperious Publicist would have served just as well p 14 Sue Saunders Arthur M Schlesinger Jr John F Kennedy Presidential Library amp Museum February 15 2006 John William Ward 1955 Andrew Jackson Symbol for an Age New York Oxford University Press Wilentz Sean The High Table Liberal review of Richard Aldous Schlesinger The Imperial Historian Norton 486 pp The New York Review of Books vol LXV no 2 8 February 2018 pp 31 33 T he subtitle of Richard Aldous s otherwise solid biography is erroneous Arthur Schlesinger Jr was in no way an imperial historian he was an anti imperial historian p 31 Primary sources edit Schlesinger Arthur M Jr A Thousand days John F Kennedy in the White House Houghton Mifflin Boston 1965 Schlesinger Arthur M Jr A Life in the Twentieth Century Innocent Beginnings 1917 1950 2000 autobiography vol 1 Schlesinger Arthur M Jr Journals 1952 2000 2007 External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Arthur M Schlesinger Jr nbsp Wikiquote has quotations related to Arthur M Schlesinger Jr Arthur M Schlesinger Jr papers 1922 2007 held by the Manuscripts and Archives Division New York Public Library Appearances on C SPAN In Depth interview with Schlesinger December 3 2000 Eisler Kim Arthur Schlesinger Dishes Dirt Washingtonian March 6 2008 An incredible writer and a proud Liberal all his life The Pulitzer Prize winning historian and court philosopher of the Kennedy administration was 89 when he died The Washington Post obituary dead link A film clip The Open Mind A life in the 20th Century September 27 2007 is available for viewing at the Internet Archive A film clip The Open Mind A Life in the 20th Century cont d September 27 2007 is available for viewing at the Internet Archive Arthur M Schlesinger Jr at Library of Congress with 156 library catalog records Arthur M Schlesinger Jr at Find a Grave nbsp Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Arthur M Schlesinger Jr amp oldid 1175338239, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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