Title Henry Steele Commager : midcentury liberalism and the history of the present / Neil Jumonville

Published Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, ©1999

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Description 1 online resource (xviii, 328 pages) : illustrations Contents Preface -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- I. Intellectuals and Historians -- 1. The Formation of a Public Intellectual, 1902-1932 -- Notes -- 2. Philosophy Teaching by Experience, 1928-1936 -- Notes -- 3. Columbia and New York in the Forties, 1938-1950 -- Notes -- II. Freedom and the American Century -- 4. Protecting Liberalism in World War ii, 1939-1947 -- Notes -- 5. Anticommunism and McCarthyism, 1945-1960 -- Notes -- 6. University, Family, and Race, 1945-1968 -- Notes -- 7. The Call to Political Morality, 1964-1974 -- Notes -- III. The Meaning of the American Past 8. The Character and Myth of Historians at Midcentury, 1937-1997 -- Notes -- 9. Liberals and the Historical Past, 1948-1997 -- Notes -- 10. Legacies, 1971-1997 -- Notes -- Notes -- Abbreviations used in the Notes -- Index Summary Historian Henry Steele Commager (1902-98) was one of the leading American intellectuals of the mid-twentieth century. Author or editor of more than forty books, he taught for decades at New York University, Columbia University, and Amherst College and was a pioneer in the field of American studies. But Commager's work was by no means confined to the halls of the university: a popular essayist, lecturer, and political commentator, he earned a reputation as an activist for liberal causes and waged public campaigns against McCarthyism in the 1950s and the Vietnam War in the 1960s. In this book, Neil Jumonville uses Commager's career to explore a number of themes central to the intellectual history of postwar America. Examining the relationship between the midcentury generation of scholars and the baby boomer generation now in the university, he reassesses the legacy of the 1940s and 1950s and illuminates the background of the culture wars of today. He also offers a reevaluation of the ideas in the liberalism of the period, including a common American identity and shared culture, pragmatism, compromise, freedom of speech, and the benefits of at least a modest consensus on goals - ideas that in recent years have taken quite a beating in the public arena Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-317) and index Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL Print version record digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL Subject Commager, Henry Steele, 1902-1998. SUBJECT Commager, Henry Steele, 1902-1998. fast (OCoLC)fst00031789 Subject Historians -- United States -- Biography Political activists -- United States -- Biography Historians -- United States -- History -- 20th century Liberalism -- United States -- History -- 20th century BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Historical. HISTORY. Historians. Intellectual life. Liberalism. Political activists. Geschiedschrijving. Geestesgeschiedenis. SUBJECT United States -- Intellectual life -- 20th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140367 Subject United States. Genre/Form Biographies. History. Biographies. Form Electronic book ISBN 080786109X 9780807861097

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