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Reviews
| Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography, by David S. Brown. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2006. 300 pages. $27.50, cloth. $17.00, paper.
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| This is an outstanding intellectual history of Richard Hofstadter—the man, his work, and the extraordinary impact he had on the scholarly world as well as the nation's intellectual community from roughly 1945 to 1975. The opening chapters provide personal information on Hofstadter's education and early development, including his family background which was quite distinguished—his father a successful businessman; one uncle a New York state judge; another a Nobel physicist—his marriage, his early leftist political affiliations, and his career at Columbia University. There are references to some of his students, many of whom became prominent historians. The balance of the book is organized around his major works, with separate chapters often concentrating on a single book. |
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Hofstadter was not an archival historian—he did not bury himself in dusty shelves of research libraries searching out documentation that heretofore had not been made public or disclosed. Nor were his the heavy tomes that are to be seen in book stores today—900 pages or more of text with perhaps 100 or so pages of footnotes at the end, and draglines of documents produced to support every assertion. Rather, Hofstadter's singular achievement in each of his books—rarely matched by other scholars—was to redefine the subject he was addressing, changing the way it was subsequently understood, discussed, researched, and investigated. Each publication, accordingly, generated extensive academic commentaries that went well beyond the usual perfunctory journal and press reviews. Notably, his work influenced the work of major scholars and writers outside the discipline of history as well—persons such as Daniel Bell, Lionel Trilling, David Riesman, C. Wright Mills, the novelist William Whyte, and John K. Galbraith. Narrating those interchanges and their respective outcomes constitutes a major part of the book |
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In reconstructing a dialogue that is stretched across disciplines, the author takes the reader back into the social and intellectual context of the period of Hofstadter's productive years—what might be called by some a golden era in the nation's history—largely at this point New York city's intellectual community. His works continued to have an impact (assigned reading and included on course syllabi) long after they were introduced. Thus, Alan Brinkley (now Provost of Columbia University) could in l985 describe Hofstadter's The Age of Reform, published thirty years before in 1955 and still in use, as a "brilliant, brave, flawed masterpiece." Accordingly, this biography—particularly because it is now available in paperback—is a source that can be used in a variety of courses: political and social history classes, courses on the cultural history of the post-World War II period—in particular, those that address the nation's then dominant intellectual community—and certainly, historiography courses dealing with twentieth-century America. |
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Except for The Progressive Historians (1968), Hofstadter's works are still in print and continue to be found on the shelves of leading bookstores. During presidential election years, for example, The American Political Tradition (1948), which consists of a series of biographical sketches, is invariably cited by political commentators as "the place for the interested reader of American politics to begin." While much of what Hofstadter says about the people profiled in that study is now regarded as dated—recent scholarship has expanded considerably our understanding of Lincoln and Roosevelt—the book continues to be useful and relevant because of its analytical structure regarding what that "tradition" (created by persons in public life) includes. First, as would be expected, are those persons who as presidents changed the times in which they lived. Next are the mediocraties, lesser known figures who nonetheless left an imprint either by inaction or mis-action. Following them are those individuals who repeatedly run for the presidency but do not win elections, such as Bryan and Stevenson; persons who educate the public and influence subsequent political reform agendas. Lastly come the influential activists who do not seek office, but enter public debate and perhaps a campaign or two to make a point (here the featuring of Wendell Phillips should be viewed as a stand in for persons such as Susan B Anthony, Jessie Jackson, Ralph Nader, and numerous others). Until recently, the chapter on John C. Calhoun provided the reference point for understanding Southern conservative political thought. Implicit throughout is the fact that we tend to organize (periodize) our past and our public policy discussions around presidential administrations, perhaps an inevitable condition of having regularly scheduled elections where new agendas are put forth to the electorate. "You carve up your past around those who hold national office" a visiting student from Japan once said to me in a class. "We don't do that." |
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His The Progressive Historians (1968), however, had only a short run. There, the intended audience was not so much the educated public as it was the history profession itself, a profession that perhaps did not want to listen, much less assign it because Hofstadter's purpose was to outline the limitations of the class conflict preoccupations of progressive historiography. Instead the favorite book of many academics even today continues to be Hofstadter's first work, Social Darwinism In American Thought (1944). |
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With apologies to the author, Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1962) is, I think, under presented. It is still to be found in bookstores even more regularly than his other publications. The book, which added an important concept to our national vocabulary, continues to have relevance in a variety of contexts—setting up university honors programs, evaluating the quality of graduate and professional curriculums, and even in judging the character of our public discourse. Hofstadter's point was a simple one, which is that we regularly do two kinds (categories) of thinking in our lives—the first he termed intelligent thinking, which involves working within a given (loading a truck, playing checkers, building a bridge or a skyscraper); the second, intellectual thinking, where the given is either changed and discarded or revised and modified in some fundamental sense (reconstructing our lives following a personal crisis, revising medical practice in light of the genetic revolution, coming to terms with global warming, redefining America's role in the world). In his view, our educational institutions, especially colleges of education who prepare K-12 teachers, (along with our culture) tend to concentrate mostly on the former to the neglect of the latter. The book, however, has had a profound impact in a number of sectors. Catholic universities, for one, took the charges to heart. Placed at the bottom of his listing of the nation's important research institutions—criticized for defaulting on their intellectual past—those institutions would not be similarly described today as they are amongst the nation's top research universities. |
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Having used the book for more than twenty years in an honors history course, it is the only work I have assigned where a student, years later, stops me in a public place saying "you may not remember me, but a long time ago I had a class with you in which we read Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism In American Life. That book changed my life." Hofstadter was a rare genius. There has been no one quite like him since. He is an example of what the best in our profession do—people like Edmund Morgan and Bernard Bailyn also come to mind—scholars who introduce new directions to follow up on and change how a field will be viewed thereafter. We do not see his kind very often. |
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| California State University, Long Beach |
Albie Burke |
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