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Title: A Life in the Twentieth Century : Innocent Beginnings, 1917 - 1950 by Arthur M. Jr. Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M. Schlesinger ISBN: 0395707528 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 21 November, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $28.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.8
Rating: 4
Summary: Schlesinger's America
Comment: A Life in the 20th Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950 is the first volume of the memoirs of the noted historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. The book examines much of the nation's history in the first half of the twentieth century as well the author's anaylsis of public policy and his impressions of an extraordinary group of writers, politicians, intellectuals, and decision makers. Schlesinger is a name dropper extraordinaire in this volume and his vignettes on the people who crossed his path are interesting and inciteful and at times irreverent and caustic.
The book is a little long (557 pages). The parts concerning his early boyhood, books read, movies seen etc. can get tedious. However, his account of his trip around the world at age 16 with his father, also a noted historian, is facinating.
Schlesinger is an unabashed anti communist, New Deal style liberal. His first great book, The Age of Jackson, won the Pulitzer Prize. In it, as in later works, his sympathies, along with Jackson, lay with the working classes as opposed to the bastions of capital, aristocracy and monopoly. Schlesinger sees a pattern of similarity of reform between the Jacksonians, the Progressives of the early twentieth century, and the New Dealers. (His later books on FDR and JFK are exceedingly sypathetic treatments of his subjects as liberal realists.) This well researched and well written book is still used in college classes today. I read it in a graduate course on the age of Jackson in the late sixties.
After World War II, Schlesinger became one of the leaders of the non -communist left. His book, The Vital Center, written in 1949 was an appeal to liberal democracy, in opposition to the twin totalitarian systems of fascism and Stalinism. At the close of the present book, he states that his philosophy is still consistent with The Vital Center and he would make few changes in it even after fifty years.
In short, A Life in the 20th Century is a good read for history junkies. Schlesinger has been at the forefront of history and history makers and his insights on people and events are always enlightening and entertaining. I look forward to the publication of the second volume.
Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent memoir (with a little history thrown in)
Comment: As a Schesinger fan, I found this book a delightful insight into the life of the best living historian. The book was very well written, and as a current college student, I found his account of his college years particularly interesting.
I would especially recommend this book to anyone interested in either twentieth century history or twentienth century American culture.
Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting book from an interesting man
Comment: Schlesinger writes a book of personal recollections that reads much like a grandfather relating his rich and rewarding life onto his next generation. It is not a hard facts history book, and it will not be remembered as such (regardless of Dr. Kissenger's overly optomistic review on the dust jacket).
There are high points and low points to this book. His experiences at Harvard, worn torn Europe, and the ideological battles between communists and liberals over control of the American left were fascinating. However, we are also privy to every movie, play, book, and cocktail dinner that schlesinger ever attended. It's interesting to gain this perspective, but it gets tedious. This book could have used substantial editing.
I'm a Schlesinger fan, but I skimmed through many pages. Despite these shortcoming, Schlesinger still imparts his genious.
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Title: The Age of Jackson: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History by Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. ISBN: 0316773433 Publisher: Little Brown & Co (Pap) Pub. Date: November, 1988 List Price(USD): $24.99 |
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Title: The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad by Fareed Zakaria ISBN: 0393047644 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power by Warren Zimmermann ISBN: 0374179395 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 21 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman, Robert K. Massie ISBN: 034538623X Publisher: Ballantine Books (Trd Pap) Pub. Date: April, 1994 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Ideas that Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in the Twenty-first Century by Michael Mandelbaum ISBN: 1586481347 Publisher: PublicAffairs Pub. Date: 03 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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