Description
Book SynopsisRichard Hofstadter (1916-70) was America's most distinguished historian of the twentieth century. The author of several books, including The American Political Tradition, he was a champion of the liberal politics that emerged from the New Deal. This biography explores his life within the context of the rise and fall of American liberalism.
Trade Review"Intelligent and stimulating... 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 Book Review "In this illuminating biography... [Brown] freshens the worn-out chronicle of postwar Upper West Side intelligentsia by retelling it from Hofstadter's playful, eternally skeptical, oddly uninflammatory point of view.... Above all, Brown helps readers assess Hofstadter as a member of a generation of American historians every bit as important as (and in some respects more so than) the well-known Progressive generation of Charles Beard, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Vernon Parrington." - Sean Wilentz, New Republic"
