A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917–1950 was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2000. It is the first (and, as it turned out, only) volume of Schlesinger’s planned multi-volume autobiography. He was eighty-three at publication and died in 2007 without completing the second volume.
The memoir covers Schlesinger’s formation: his childhood as the son of Arthur Schlesinger Sr. (himself a distinguished Harvard historian), his education at Phillips Exeter and Harvard, his wartime service in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in London and Paris, his return to Harvard as a young professor, and the writing of The Age of Jackson at age twenty-eight. It is both personal memoir and intellectual history — Schlesinger’s life was so thoroughly embedded in the political and intellectual currents of his time that autobiographically is inevitably historiography.
The book is valuable for its portraits of mid-century intellectual life: Harvard in the 1930s (Perry Miller, F.O. Matthiessen, the young McGeorge Bundy), wartime intelligence work alongside figures who would later shape the Cold War, the emergence of the anti-communist left in the late 1940s. Schlesinger writes with characteristic fluency and self-confidence — there is no false modesty about his accomplishments or his place in history.
Collecting A Life in the Twentieth Century
First edition (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2000): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $15–$40
- Signed: $40–$80
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
The Historian’s Memoir
A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917–1950 (2000) is the first volume of Schlesinger’s autobiography, covering his youth in an intellectually distinguished family (his father was the Harvard historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.), his education at Harvard, his wartime intelligence work, and the publication of The Age of Jackson. The memoir provides a vivid portrait of American intellectual life from the 1930s through the early Cold War and reveals Schlesinger’s formation as a liberal public intellectual. A planned second volume was never completed before his death in 2007.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was there a second volume? No — Schlesinger died in 2007 before completing the planned continuation of his memoirs. His extensive journals, covering the Kennedy and Johnson years, were published posthumously and serve as a partial substitute.