Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian

by Richard Aldous

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (1917–2007), known today as the architect of John F. Kennedy’s presidential legacy, blazed an extraordinary path from Harvard University to wartime London to the West Wing. The son of a pioneering historian—and a two-time Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner in his own right—Schlesinger redefined the art of presidential biography. A Thousand Days, his best-selling and immensely influential record of the Kennedy administration, cemented Schlesinger’s place as one of the nation’s greatest political image makers and a key figure of the American intellectual elite—a peer and contemporary of Reinhold Niebuhr, Isaiah Berlin, and Adlai Stevenson.

The first major biography of this defining figure in Kennedy’s Camelot, Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian presents a dramatic life and career set against the backdrop of the American Century. Biographer Richard Aldous draws on oral history, rarely seen archival documents, and the official Schlesinger papers to craft a portrait of the incandescently brilliant and controversial historian who framed America’s ascent to global empire.

Genres: Biography, History, Politics, American History, Nonfiction

496 pages, Hardcover

Published October 10, 2017

About the author

Richard Aldous, the author of The Lion and the Unicorn, is Eugene Meyer Professor of British History and Literature at Bard College. He has been a fellow at the Royal Historical Society, a trustee of the Gladstone Library, and advisor to the British Council, and commentator for the Irish Times and the BBC.

Reviews

[Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the biography of Arthur Schlesinger (1917-2007). Aldous tells of Arthur’s life at Exeter, Harvard, Cambridge and then as a fellow at Harvard University. It was at that point he began his work on “The Age of Jackson” for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1946. His career was managed by his famous father, Arthur Meier Schlesinger, who was a famous Harvard historian. Academically he was unable to come out from under his famous father’s shadow.

The book is well written and researched. Schlesinger became one of the best-known American historians of the 20th century. He wrote biographies of Andrew Jackson, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy as well as a 3-volume biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Aldeas portrays Schlesinger as a gifted intellectual with a wide range of distinguish people he associated with such as Adlai Stevenson, Averell Herriman, Eleanor Roosevelt and George Kennan to name a few. Aldous covers the interesting life of Schlesinger and includes his time in the Kennedy White House as a speech writer. In fact, I came away with the feeling that Schlesinger’s life was more interesting than his writings. The book is interesting and I obtained a better insight of the time and his life.

I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is eighteen hours and forty-one minutes. Norman Dietz does a poor job narrating the book. Dietz is a well-known long-time audiobook narrator and is usually better than this performance.

[Steven Z. · Rating 4 out of 5]

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary a “gadfly” is “a person who stimulates or annoys other people especially by persistent criticism.” According to Richard Aldous, in his new biography, SCHLESINGER: THE IMPERIAL HISTORIAN, the definition fits Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s role as Special Assistant to the President during the Kennedy administration. Aldous’ work is the first full-length biography of Schlesinger and he successfully grapples with a number of questions as his narrative unfolds. First, was Schlesinger a great and important historian, a model of how academics and public service can mix? Second, was he a popularizer and court historian held captive to the establishment that nurtured his career? After reading Aldous’ monograph there is no conclusive answer and elements of each question make up Schlesinger’s academic career at Harvard, as well as a speech writer and advisor to President Kennedy. However, Aldous ably balances his subject’s talent as a writer of historical monographs and speeches with a clear acknowledgement of his shortcomings as a political analyst and aide.

My interest in Schlesinger dates back to a debate between Schlesinger and William F. Buckley, the editor of the National Review and the preeminent voice of conservatism during his lifetime. I was a college senior and witnessed their give and take as I watched how Buckley goaded Schlesinger as the spokesperson for a liberal internationalist foreign policy as well as social engineering. My memory points to an academic who had difficulty keeping up with Buckley and the scenes described by Aldous in the book provides further evidence as to how Buckley would get under Schlesinger’s skin.

Aldous’ work describes a young man who was guided by his father, Arthur M. Schlesinger, a Harvard professor and distinguished historian. Along with his father, Harvard connections would guide Schlesinger through the world of academia as well as other aspects of his life, for example, his work with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the end of the war. When Schlesinger felt uncomfortable in a position, his Harvard connections and relationships would ease him into a more favorable position. Aldous explores the evolution of Schlesinger’s intellectual and ideological development very carefully honing in on the influence of his father, his attachment to Adlai Stevenson who twice ran unsuccessfully for president, a diverse group of Harvard academics like John Kenneth Galbraith and others, and the lessons learned as he tried to navigate his role in the Kennedy administration where he was seen as part of the liberal establishment in what was really a conservative leaning presidency.

From the outset we see the young Schlesinger using his father as a role model. Once he made the decision to attend Harvard and use “Jr.” as part of his legal name he was inevitably seem as “the sorcerer’s apprentice” in relation to his father. Schlesinger would achieve early academic success with the publication of ORESTES BROWNSON: A PILGRIMS PROGRESS a book about a convert who attempted unsuccessfully to liberalize and Americanize the Catholic Church. But the work that placed him on the academic ladder was his AGE OF JACKSON published in 1945 which moved away from Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Thesis” by emphasizing the national character of the western frontier that included urban workers, small farmers, and intellectuals in the Northeast. Schlesinger would present Jacksonianism as a forerunner of the Progressive Era and the New Deal in attempting to restrain the power of the business community.

Aldous’ work is in part an intellectual history as he follows the thesis of a number of important historians who came to the fore in the 1930s who impacted Schlesinger’s work. At the end of World War II, Schlesinger’s academic bonafede’s would be enhanced with the completion of his seminal work THE VITAL CENTER which defends liberal democracy and a state-regulated market economy against the totalitarianism of communism and fascism. As Schlesinger has written, “it is the very process of democracy itself, not perfect ends, which forms the bulwark against totalitarianism.” The book that Schlesinger is most noted for is his chronicle of the Kennedy administration, A THOUSAND DAYS which earned him the nickname as the “court historian” for the abbreviated presidency. As Aldous points out the book was to be a “legacy project” for Jacqueline Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and the book that resulted, completed a year after the assassination, “endures as a masterly portrait of a man that its author believed had been the perfect leader for a nation in the nuclear age and the zenith of its prosperity and global sway.”*

Aldous has prepared a thoroughly researched work with many insights into Schlesinger’s personal life, academic career, and public role. He introduces numerous stories and individuals that enhance the narrative. His competition with Theodore Sorenson during the Kennedy administration is a case in point as the two men vied for the primary role as the president’s speech writer. Sorenson emerges as somewhat of a control freak who resented Schlesinger and did his best to make him as irrelevant as possible. Another prominent individual that Schlesinger held in low opinion was Secretary of State Dean Rusk who he viewed as weak, lacking a backbone in debating issues and formulating policy. The publication of the first three volumes of the AGE OF ROOSEVELT which was supposed to run five volumes is a turning point for Schlesinger as he crystalized the war between liberalism and business-dominated conservatism, and ultimately the collapse of faith in business led to the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Aldous effectively dissects the published three volumes which were all published by 1957.

During that time Schlesinger worked to elect Adlai Stevenson as president as one of his major speech writers and advisors. The relationship between the two men occupies a great deal of the narrative as the Kennedy people eventually saw Stevenson as weak and too liberal. In fact, Aldous points out that Schlesinger was tasked to control Stevenson’s high moral tone during the Cuban Missile Crisis and make sure he was strong enough against the Soviet Union in the United Nations Security Council. Schlesinger’s main problem in the Kennedy administration was his links to Stevenson’s presidential runs and the fact that conservatives within the administration saw him as a liberal in the mold of the eastern establishment. Despite this, Schlesinger developed a good personal and working relationship with Kennedy even though he believed there were too many conservatives and Republicans in the administration. He did have a great deal of access to Kennedy as the president enjoyed their discussions of history and ideas and wanted to be remembered as a great president and therefore, he thought it was wise to have in attendance a great historian as he saw Schlesinger as having a keen mind who drew parallels between events of the day and past historical events and figures.

During the Kennedy administration Schlesinger fulfilled his role as a gadfly. As a Special Assistant to the President he had no specific role and tended to delve into areas of interest as well as those assigned to him. His views on the planning and outcome of the Bay of Pigs fiasco were dead on and Kennedy would ask him to analyze how the CIA and decision-making in general could be reformed or improved. During the Berlin Crisis he advocated giving Khrushchev an out as not to humiliate him and possibly cause a war. He was involved in the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty debate but was kept to the side except for his role as “keeper of the UN Ambassador” during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Schlesinger had limited interest in Southeast Asia and opted out on the issue of Vietnam which are an indication of the limitations of his role as special advisor without any particular portfolio. If there is a weakness in Aldous coverage is his short shrift in discussing the burgeoning Civil Rights movement and the legislation that emanated from the Kennedy administration and other domestic issues that Schlesinger prepared speeches for. But overall, Schlesinger’s role in the administration was impactful and somewhat influential, despite the fact it took him a long time to learn how to navigate the positives and pitfalls of a public career.

It is unfortunate that Aldous rushes through Schlesinger’s last four decades, devoting little space to works such as THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY, CYCLES IN AMERICAN HISTORY, THE DISUNITING OF AMERICA and his biography of Robert Kennedy. In doing so “he misses the opportunity to examine how Schlesinger’s gradual loss of intellectual influence mirrored the crisis of American liberalism itself.”* Despite this shortcoming, Aldous has written the preeminent biography of a fascinating career.

*Michael Kazin, “A Liberal Historian’s Imprint on Mid-Century America,” New York Times, November 2, 2017.

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a workmanlike job, marred among other things by a seeming desire to overstate its subject's significance as a "political figure," with a "political career" while necessarily having to concede that his impact on events as a presidential assistant/speechwriter was limited. AES was unquestionably one of the foremost American historians of the 20th century, a superb literary stylist, and a fine biographer whose works on the Kennedy Administration, and RFK, remain seminal. For those things, more than anything he did in the White House, he is and will continue to be remembered. It is hard to avoid mourning his failure to ever finish his Age of Roosevelt history, which concludes in 1936 with FDR's landslide reelection victory.

The author has an unfortunate habit of making the apparent assumption that his audience needs to have rather elementary perceived gaps in their education plugged, or has a high tolerance for the obvious. For example, "On one occasion in 1946, [Schlesinger] found himself at dinner with Stewart Alsop (great-nephew of President Theodore Roosevelt), Franklin Roosevelt, Jr, (fifth child of President Franklin Roosevelt)." Soon thereafter, after noting that this same occasion marked the first direct encounter between Schlesinger and JFK, the author notes the following:

"It surely did not occur to either man that Schlesinger would be the chronicler of the thirty-fifth president."

At another, he generously points out that Idlewild Airport is now JFK Airport.

This is a good book that needed a good editor.

[Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book, but I think Schlesinger sacrificed much for his proximity to power. It is interesting to note just how little he accomplished with this closeness to authority. The author devotes much space to the great days of the New Frontier where Schlesinger hovers around the margins of power, essentially there to drink daiquiris with JFK.

I have read most of his works and I have to confess that I have yet to be impressed. There are far more works that are worthier than Schlesinger’s Jackson. It’s principle thesis, that Jackson restored something like an egalitarian posture in the US upon his election, is nonsense. If the Founding Fathers had sought equality they would have allowed for a universal franchise. Democracy was always problematic.

Schlesinger did have an interesting life and this is why a biography is probably more interesting than a selection of his works.

[Bill Lucey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Historian Richard Aldous presents a remarkably well-balanced and informative, biography of one of the preeminent historians of the modern age, Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

At the young age of 28, the Ohio born historian won a Pulitzer Prize in history for the “Age of Jackson,” still considered a classic today, in capturing not so much the biographical nuances of the seventh President of the United States, Andrew Jackson, but the Jacksonian democracy that permeated the era with its progression of classical liberalism.

Despite his multi-faceted intellectual endeavors, Schlesinger is best known for being President Kennedy’s court historian.

It was a perfect marriage.

Both appeared to be cut from the same cloth, both with overbearing fathers, both Harvard educated, both with best selling books at a young age, and both immersed in rocky marriages.

Schlesinger, of course, would go on to write “A Thousand Days’’ his personal recollections of the short-lived White House years of John F. Kennedy. The book won a Pulitzer Prize for biography or autobiography.

Throughout Professor Aldous’s well researched, superbly written biography, you get the sense that over the years, Schlesinger regretted becoming too connected to the Kennedy’s. It was John F. Kennedy, after all, who pulled him away from his professorship at Harvard, a position he loved and absolutely hated giving up. And it was Ethel Kennedy, who prodded him to write a biography on Bobby Kennedy, which he did in “Robert Kennedy and His Times.”

Schlesinger did go on to produce some widely read political narratives, including the “Imperial Presidency,” and “Cycles of American History,” among others.

Still, you wonder what revolutionary works this prestigious American historian, social critic, and public intellectual would have produced had he not been so tightly connected to the Kennedy’s and cultivating the Kennedy mystique.

--Bill Lucey
January 18, 2018

[Joseph J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating focus on the distinguished historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. as a political and educational force in the mid twentieth century. As the precocious son of an established historian Arthur Jr. made his mark early on with the Age of Jackson and then the Age of Roosevelt. However Arthur's involvement in liberal Democratic party politics led him from intense involvement with Adlai Stevenson in the 1950's to his famous association with John F. Kennedy in the 1960's. Indeed Schlesinger was an "in house historian" to the well read JFK with an eye toward documenting at the end of eight years the history of the Kennedy administration. Dallas ended that goal, but led to the Pulitzer Prize winning A Thousand Days, his more personal and still read and cited account of the tragically brief Kennedy years. His association with the Kennedy's continued with Bobby, and another assassination and his mammoth biography of that tragically short lived figure. This book is a superb intersection of history and culture which reflects a "brief shining moment when reading and education and a sense of history were prized by our leaders, rather than a leader bragging that he has never read a book. I own A Thousand Days, Robert F. Kennedy and His Times, and Journals (of Schlesinger which a refer to often). I still learned much from these well written pages. Question: LBJ had historian Eric Goldman as an in hour scribe (a rough tenure-see The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson by him) and Reagan had Edmond Morris who produced an odd marriage of biography and fiction. Has any other President had an in house historian?

[Vincent Lombardo · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading half of this book, I gave up on it last night and wrote a scathing review. But today I picked it up again and finished it, and I am glad that I did.

Aldous writes very clearly and does a good job of summarizing Schlesinger the man and Schlesinger the historian, and he is most generous describing Schlesinger's legacy as an historian. Before reading this book, I was always ambivalent about Schlesinger, but after reading this book, I disliked him even more than before!

Schlesinger was an entitled, irascible, argumentative man who was often rescued by his famous father, and he was really a political commentator acting like an historian. He wanted both to write history and to make history, but his desire to make history detracted from his writing of history, particularly concerning the Kennedys. As for his contributions as an historian, he basically kept repeating the thesis of his first major book, "The Age of Jackson", in all of his subsequent works!

I was a history major at the University of Pennsylvania from 1974 to 1978, and I do not recall being assigned a single Schlesinger book in any of my classes, and whenever his name was mentioned by an instructor, it was usually with disdain. (Although some of that disdain could be attributed to jealousy that Schlesinger wrote so well and was a best selling author!)

This book was too long and repetitive, and Aldous dwelled a lot on minutiae. But if you want to know more about Schlesinger and his work, this is the book for you.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book. Richly researched combination of intellectual, political and personal biography. Schlesinger comes alive here and his brilliant professional reputation (including two Pulitzer prizes) is rescued from the unfair characterization as just a striving Kennedy courtier. Easy to forget that Henry Kissinger was not the first Harvard professor to take Washington, New York, and the world by storm.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

My knowledge about Schlesinger and his life consisted of only the basics before I read this engaging book by Aldous. As a history major and amateur historian, I really enjoyed following Schlesinger's life as both a historian and a participant in history, most notably as a Special Assistant to President John F. Kennedy. And his colorful personal life definitely was a plus to the book!

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book that offers a comprehensive insight into the life of Schlesinger and the conflicts thereof. Recommended.

[G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent, easy reading biography of the man who was “in the room where it happened” in the post WWII era.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I started thinking about myself as an historian, Schlesinger was an inspiration. Not only a good, if not great, historian but one engaged in public life. No ivory tower for him. This book presents all of his accomplishments and all of of his problems.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the brief opportunity to meet Schlesinger once and looked forward to this book. I was not disappointed. Aldous presents a comprehensive portrait of the many sides of Schlesinger. He criticizes Schlesinger where he needs to and praises him the same way. This is a multifaceted work on one of the most important figures if the 20th and 21st centuries.