Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"As a collective intellectual biography of some of the foremost social science thinkers of the early to mid-century, this book provides perhaps the clearest picture yet of the dilemmas facing the scholar-as-democratic reformer. Smith manages a judicious blend of the personal biography and individual career path with a penetrating account of the subject's main writings and intellectual contributions. His book should be read by a large, interdisciplinary audience."—Leon Fink, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
"This is a superb piece of work. There is nothing quite like this book in the available literature and it will nicely supplement the best of previously published accounts of the history of social science in the United States. It is also an important intervention in the current debate about the decline of the public intellectual."—Robert Westbrook, University of Rochester
Table of ContentsIntroduction 3
1. American Social Science: Moralism and the Scientific Method 13
2. Wesley Mitchell and the Quantitative Approach 49
3. Charles Merriam and Technical Expertise 84
4. Robert Lynd and Knowledge for What? 120
5. Charles Beard and Activist Social Science 159
6. Harold D. Lasswell and the Lost Opportunity of the Purposive School 212
Conclusion 253
Notes 271
Index 336
