The author of such classic works as The Republican Roosevelt, V Was
for Victory, and Years of Discord, John Morton Blum is one of a
small group of intellectuals who for more than a quarter of a
century dominated the writing of American political history.
Writing now of his own career, Blum provides a behind-the-scenes
look at Ivy League education and political power from the 1940s to
the 1980s.
Blum insightfully recounts a long and distinguished journey that
began at Phillips Academy, where he first realized he could make a
career of teaching and writing history. He tells how young men were
socialized to the values of the Northeastern establishment in those
years before World War II, and how as a non-practicing Jew he
learned to over-come bigotry both at Andover and at Harvard, which
then had no Jewish professors.
In 1957 Blum joined the faculty of Yale University's history
department, widely regarded as the nation's best, where he became
both influential and popular and where his students included one
future U.S. president as well as others who aspired to the office.
He reveals much about the inner workings of Ivy League education
and tells of controversies over the Vietnam War and the Black
Panthers, his role in Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign, and
how he searched for common ground between reactionary faculty and
radical students.
More than a recounting of a singular life, Blum's story explains
how political history was researched and written during the second
half of the twentieth century, describing how the discipline
evolved, gained ascendancy, and was challenged as historical
fashions changed. It also offers revealing glimpses of such
prominent academics as Kingman Brewster, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,
C. Vann Woodward, and William Sloan Coffin.
Over a distinguished career, Blum witnessed considerable change
in elite educational institutions, where minorities and women were
grossly underrepresented when he first entered academia. In a
memoir brimming with insight and laced with humor, he looks back at
the academy--"not a refuge from reality but an alternative
reality"--as he reflects upon his intellectual journey and his
contributions to the study and writing of twentieth-century
American history.
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