Easton Press: SIGNED ARTHUR SCHLESINGER: HARVARD PROFESSOR: MEMOIRS

Description: Easton Press leather edition of Arthur Schlesinger's "A Life in the 20th Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950," a SIGNED FIRST EDITION, Cover design by Gwen Ackley, Certificate of Authenticity signed by ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, Jr., signed on 22 February 2001, published in 2000. Bound in hunter green leather, the book has camel tan French moire silk end leaves, satin book marker, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, hubbed spine, gold gilding on three edges---in FINE condition. Dr. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was born in 1917 in Ohio, the son of Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. and the grandson of America's first historian, George Bancroft. Schlesinger, Jr. grew up in the academic world. Schlesinger writes of the differences between his father's approach to the study of history, especially the history of race and gender in the U.S. Even as a child, Schlesinger loved to read, inhaling books. He wrote: "I remember liking "Swiss Family Robinson" but when I read this to my own children, they did not like the blood thirsty Calvinists who spent an inordinate time praying and massacring inoffensive animals. Schlesinger wrote of his years at Phillips Exeter Academy and his Harvard classmates. Schlesinger later worked in the Office of Strategic Services (later the CIA) and there he met several famous people, including Kenneth Galbraith, Walt Rostow, Bill Casey and others. His "The Age of Jackson" won the PULITZER PRIZE and the book sold over 90,000 copies and helped to establish his reputation as an academic. Schlesinger set off a '"firestorm" when he interviewed Supreme Court members for FORTUNE magazine. "Four of the FDR justices----HUGO BLACK, FELIX FRANKFURTER, WILLIAM O. DOUGLASS, and ROBERT H. JACKSON---were brilliant and histrionic figures. Frank Murphy was less brilliant but amply histrionic. Stanley Reed and Wiley Rutledge were capable and colorless moderates; so was Harold Burton, the single Republican and Truman's first appointment. Roosevelt's justices agreed on the New Deal, but they now sharply disagreed on judicial questions." "Frankfurter was the justice I knew best---a pal of my parents. I feel badly about the Supreme Court repercussions, I wrote to my parents. Everyone is apparently mad at me---Douglas very hurt and very mad; Black, resigned; Murphy furious and wanting to sue me for libel; Jackson, mad; Frankfurter, annoyed; Reed annoyed. . .it is much simpler to write about dead people." In 1947, Schlesinger returned to HARVARD as a history professor where he was friends with Bernard De Voto, Ken Galbraith, Perry Miller, F.O. Matthiessen, Harry Levin, George Homans, and Morton White. Schlesinger discusses President HARRY TRUMAN and the MARSHALL PLAN. He quotes Elmer Davis who said, "There are two Trumans---the White House Truman and the courthouse Truman. He does the big things right, and the little things wrong." Schlesinger discusses STALIN and TITO. In the last chapter Schlesinger wrote: "Approaching 1950, the halfway mark of the twentieth century, and soon to confront my own first third of a century, I rejoiced in our four children, rather enjoyed my new life at Harvard, intermittently contemplated the inevitable tensions of marriage, pursued my investigations of the age of Roosevelt, wondered how to balance academic respectability and political activism, viewed the decade to come with mingled foreboding and hope. The Cold War was now under way. As 1949 drew to a close, the Soviet Union exploded its own atomic bomb, thereby creating the awful possibility of nuclear war. . .More than ever, however, I was persuaded of the unknowabilitiy of the future." In the Foreword, Schlesinger quotes Mark Twain who once wrote to William Dean Howells, "An autobiography is the truest of all books 557 pages, including an index. I offer Combined shipping.

Price: 54.95 USD

Location: Walnut Ridge, Arkansas

End Time: 2024-12-04T13:52:25.000Z

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