Schlesinger, Arthur Meier, Jr.

(1917-2007)

   Born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger Jr., the future historian later changed his name to that of his father, Arthur Meier Schlesinger Sr., himself a distinguished historian. Schlesinger Jr. attended the Collegiate School and Phillips Exeter Academy. He went to Harvard in 1938 but did not complete his Ph.D. During World War II, he served in the Office of War Information and from 1943 to 1945 in the Office of Strategic Services. He continued his historical research and in 1945 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Age of Jackson. His three-volume study, The Age of Roosevelt, came out in 1957, 1958, and 1960, respectively. From 1946 to 1961, Schlesinger was professor of history at Harvard and from 1966 professor of humanities at the City University of New York.

   However, Schlesinger’s significance was as much for his influence on politics as for his historical writing. A supporter of liberal politics, he was an influential member of Americans for Democratic Action; in 1949, he wrote The Vital Center, calling for a reformist alternative to what he perceived as the totalitarianism of the communist left and fascist right. Schlesinger was a speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and George McGovern. His study of the Kennedy presidency, A Thousand Days (1966), won another Pulitzer Prize. He also wrote the study Robert F. Kennedy and His Times (1978). Among his other works were Bitter Heritage (1967), Violence: America in the Sixties (1968), and the influential study The Imperial Presidency (1973).