Richard Hofstadter (1916-70) was America’s most distinguished historian of the twentieth century. The author of several groundbreaking books, including The American Political Tradition, he was a vigorous champion of the liberal politics that emerged from the New Deal.
During his nearly thirty-year career, Hofstadter fought public campaigns against liberalism’s most dynamic opponents, from McCarthy in the 1950s to Barry Goldwater and the Sun Belt conservatives in the 1960s. His opposition to the extreme politics of postwar America—articulated in his books, essays, and public lectures—marked him as one of the nation’s most important and prolific public intellectuals.
Order Your Copy Now From the Following Retailers:
In this masterful biography, David Brown explores Hofstadter’s life within the context of the rise and fall of American liberalism. A fierce advocate of academic freedom, racial justice, and political pluralism, Hofstadter charted in his works the changing nature of American society from a provincial Protestant foundation to one based on the values of an urban and multiethnic nation. According to Brown, Hofstadter presciently saw in rural America’s hostility to this cosmopolitanism signs of an anti-intellectualism that he believed was dangerously endemic in a mass democracy.
By the end of a life cut short by leukemia, Hofstadter had won two Pulitzer Prizes, and his books had attracted international attention. Yet the Vietnam years, as Brown shows, culminated in a conservative reaction to his work that is still with us. Whether one agrees with Hofstadter’s critics or with the noted historian John Higham, who insisted that Hofstadter was “the finest and also the most humane intelligence of our generation,” the importance of this seminal thinker cannot be denied. As this fascinating biography ultimately shows, Hofstadter’s observations on the struggle between conservative and liberal America are relevant to our own times, and his legacy challenges us to this day.
What the Critics Are Saying:
“Eventually, most wised-up readers of history come to agree with the advice of E. H. Carr, cited and honored by David S. Brown, that ‘Before you study the history, study the historian.’ The payoff of Brown’s effort comes in Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography, an incisive interpretive profile.”
Carlin Romano
Chronicle of Higher Education“Analytical and critical yet deeply appreciative of Hofstadter’s importance, Brown has written an elegant model study.”
John David Smith
North Carolina Historical Review“[In] his intelligent and stimulating book. . . . Brown admirably balances respect for his subject with critical distance and persuasively makes the case that the ambiguousness of Hofstadter’s legacy is inseparable from his continuing interest. . . . At his best, Hofstadter remains vitally alive and endlessly instructive.”
Sam Tanenhaus
New York Times“The most important political book of 2006 that is not a book about politics at all.”
E.J. Dionne
Washington Post“A truly fascinating story, and very much to the point . . . since Hofstadter’s private life did much to shape the content and thought behind his books. . . . Add to all this Brown’s analysis of each of Hofstadter’s important works, and his book makes for a remarkable tale, well-told, with relevance for our time.”
Robert Leiter
Jewish Exponent“Brown’s study provides a rewarding glimpse into the fascinating life–and a fine commentary on the enduring work–of the inimitable Richard Hofstadter.”
