Person

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Historian

Related Excerpts

RFK, in Arthur Schlesinger’s Words

On the 50th anniversary of RFK's death, a glimpse inside one of his closest relationships.

The Power Historian

What was Arthur Schlesinger’s “vital center”?

How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

When J.F.K. ran for President, a team of data scientists with powerful computers set out to model and manipulate American voters. Sound familiar?

The Political Odyssey of Sean Wilentz

How one of America's original Bernie Bros became an outspoken critic of the left.
partner

When ‘Free Speech’ Becomes a Political Weapon

What we can learn from liberal anti-communists.

Donald Trump and the 'Paranoid Style' in American (Intellectual) Politics

Revisiting Holfstadter's "paranoid style" in the era of Trump.
Jackson statue outside the White House.

Trump's Jacksonian Moment

A new biography of Andrew Jackson recounts a bloody history, and reveals disturbing parallels between the 1830s and the Trump era.

A People’s Obituary of Henry Kissinger

For decades, Kissinger kept the great wheel of American militarism spinning ever forward.
Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Voices from the Wilderness

The actual history of New Deal policies provides little evidence that it was a rollicking success.
Isaiah Berlin

Cold War Liberalism Returns

A left that is ambivalent about liberalism can still seek to engage it.
Then-Sen. John F. Kennedy (left) met with Democratic Party rival Adlai Stevenson on the porch of Kennedy’s house in 1960.

How JFK Sacrificed Adlai Stevenson and the Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis

The standoff 60 years ago has newfound relevance for handling the Ukraine crisis today.
Headstones in Mount Auburn cemetery. Photograph by Daderot at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18003519.
original

A Tour of Mount Auburn Cemetery

Two centuries of New England intellectual history through the lives and ideas of people who are memorialized there.
McGeorge Bundy with Lyndon Johnson in 1967

American Mandarins

David Halberstam’s title The Best and the Brightest was steeped in irony. Did these presidential advisers earn it?
Watercolor portrait of Bronson Alcott, a 19th century American philosopher and educator.

New England Ecstasies

The transcendentalists thought all human inspiration was divine, all nature a miracle.
Leonard Bernstein in the 1960s, at his desk piled with music scores, reading one, pen in hand.

Conservatives Say Liberals Want West Side Story to Be “Woke Side Story”

The beloved musical’s creator struggled to find a place between left and center.
Portrait of Steve Bannon with a serious expression

Executive Privilege Was Out of Control Even Before Steve Bannon Claimed It

A short history of a made-up constitutional doctrine that gives presidents too much power.
Black and white photo of John Maynard Keynes and wife Lydia Lopokova

Left, Right and Keynes

Today's centrists are a hot mess.
Chemical plant worker

Where Would We Be Without the New Deal?

A new history charts the forgotten ways the social politics of the Roosevelt years transformed the United States.
Drawing of the Alamo

How Racism, American Idealism, and Patriotism Created the Modern Myth of the Alamo and Davy Crockett

Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford on the making of a misrepresented narrative.
Four stars with different designs

How America Fractured Into Four Parts

People in the United States no longer agree on the nation’s purpose, values, history, or meaning. Is reconciliation possible?