Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was the most publicly prominent American historian of the twentieth century — a man who combined the writing of serious history with active participation in the political life of his nation to a degree that no other American historian has matched. He won his first Pulitzer Prize at twenty-seven for The Age of Jackson (1945), served as Special Assistant to President John F. Kennedy in the White House, won a second Pulitzer for A Thousand Days (1965), and spent the remaining four decades of his life as the most visible and most articulate defender of American liberalism, writing prolifically, appearing on television, and maintaining a social life of legendary intensity in New York and on the Vineyard.

Harvard Royalty

Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1917, the son of Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., himself a distinguished American historian at Harvard. The younger Schlesinger grew up in Cambridge, attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College, and was elected to the Harvard Society of Fellows in 1939 — all before his twenty-second birthday. He served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II and in the Office of War Information in London and Paris.

The Age of Jackson (1945), his doctoral dissertation revised for publication, was an immediate success — it won the Pulitzer Prize and established Schlesinger’s reputation as a historian who could combine archival research with narrative power. The book argued that Jacksonian democracy was not primarily an agrarian movement (as Frederick Jackson Turner had maintained) but an alliance of Eastern urban workers, intellectuals, and reformers — a thesis that aligned Jacksonian democracy with the New Deal liberalism that Schlesinger championed.

The Vital Center

The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949) was Schlesinger’s political manifesto — a defence of liberal anticommunism that argued for a “vital center” between the extremes of right-wing reaction and left-wing totalitarianism. The book was one of the defining texts of Cold War liberalism and helped establish the intellectual framework for the Democratic Party’s centrist orientation in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Age of Roosevelt

The three volumes of The Age of Roosevelt — The Crisis of the Old Order (1957), The Coming of the New Deal (1958), and The Politics of Upheaval (1960) — were Schlesinger’s most ambitious historical work. The trilogy told the story of the New Deal as a dramatic narrative of presidential leadership, political conflict, and democratic renewal, written in prose of remarkable energy and narrative drive. Schlesinger’s Roosevelt was a heroic figure — pragmatic, resourceful, and committed to the expansion of democratic opportunity — and the trilogy was both a major work of history and a political argument for activist government. A projected fourth volume was never completed.

The Kennedy Years

In 1961, Schlesinger joined the Kennedy White House as Special Assistant to the President — a role that was part historian-in-residence, part intellectual adviser, and part speechwriter. His account of the Kennedy presidency, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (1965), won a second Pulitzer Prize. The book was criticised by some historians as too sympathetic — Schlesinger was an intimate of the Kennedy family and made no pretence of neutrality — but it was universally admired as a work of political writing, vivid in its characterisation and masterful in its narrative of decision-making during the Cuban missile crisis and the civil rights struggle.

Robert Kennedy and His Times (1978) was a massive biography that traced Kennedy’s evolution from conservative anticommunist to champion of racial justice and opponent of the Vietnam War.

Later Career

Schlesinger’s later books addressed the largest themes in American political life. The Imperial Presidency (1973) argued that the American presidency had accumulated unconstitutional powers, particularly in the conduct of foreign affairs and war-making. The Cycles of American History (1986) developed the theory (inherited from his father) that American politics alternates between periods of progressive reform and conservative consolidation. The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (1991) argued against the excesses of identity politics and multiculturalism — a controversial position for a liberal.

The Historian as Partisan: A Debate

Schlesinger’s career raised the central question of whether a historian can also be a political partisan and retain scholarly credibility. His critics — particularly on the New Left and later on the academic left — argued that his histories were essentially propaganda for a liberal establishment, that The Age of Jackson distorted the historical record to serve a New Deal political agenda, and that A Thousand Days was court history written by a courtier. The critiques had merit: Schlesinger was never a disinterested scholar, and his histories served political arguments as much as they served historical truth. But the alternative view — that detachment is itself a political stance, and that Schlesinger’s willingness to declare his commitments openly was more honest than the pretence of objectivity — also has force. His prose style, modelled on Henry Adams and Winston Churchill, was the most distinguished of any American historian of his generation, and his ability to make history feel urgent and consequential — to write as if the outcomes mattered — gave his best work a vitality that more cautious scholarship lacks.

Collecting Schlesinger

The Age of Jackson (Little, Brown, 1945) in first edition with dust jacket is the primary target — the twenty-seven-year-old Pulitzer winner. A Thousand Days (Houghton Mifflin, 1965) is the Kennedy classic. The three-volume Age of Roosevelt (Houghton Mifflin, 1957–1960) is collected as a set. The Vital Center (Houghton Mifflin, 1949) is important as a Cold War document. Schlesinger was a gregarious and generous signer; inscribed copies are available and add value.