A difficult subject has found a conscientious exponent - as regards
columnist Lippmann and postwar U.S. foreign policy, an incisive,
even eloquent one. Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) was a Harvard
wunderkind drawn into socialism (Steel posits) as a Jewish
outsider. In short order he worked as Lincoln Steffens' legman, as
an aide to the Socialist mayor of Schenectady, as an editorialist
for the Masses and the Call; at 23 he produced A Preface to
Politics, the first application of Freudian concepts (of human
drives and sublimation) to political thought. His reputation made,
he became an editor of the new New Republic, a writer/ advisor to
TR, a favorite of eminent elders (Louis Brandeis, Learned Hand),
the author - most strikingly - of several of Wilson's Fourteen
Points; and, meanwhile, an ex-Socialist. It was the first of many
shifts - in Lippmann's theorizing, his attitude toward public
figures, his position on public issues. Steel cites the
discrepancies, lauds Lippmann's "intellectual flexibility," never
comes to grips with the problem of inconsistency in a professional
pundit - such as Lippmann became on the New Republic and remained
as a columnist for the World (1922-31) and the Herald-Tribune
(1931-1967). Neither - in noting that Lippmann was silent on the
Nazi persecution of Jews (after a "deeply offensive" 1933 column),
that he clamored for Japanese expulsion from the West Coast in
World War II - does he face the incongruity of this behavior in the
author of books of moral philosophy. The result, here, is that the
interwar years lack force or focus: seeing the complexity, we seek
more than Steel's narrow psychological interpretation. But as World
War II progresses, as Lippmann - the golfing partner of
moguls-becomes the voice of reason against mindless anti-communism,
Cold War militancy, American messianism, McCarthy, and finally the
Vietnam War, his pragmatism becomes principle; and Steel, expert in
these events, cuts through to the quick of them. If the book has a
dramatic climax, it's the presence of radical journalist I. F.
Stone at the Lippmanns' annual mint julep garden party in 1966.
Lippmann's private life and personal habits we learn about
incidentally - save for the "scandal" of his affair with (and
subsequent marriage to) the wife of his best friend, related here
as she told it to the author. (The episode is more chilling than
otherwise - Lippmann asked his father-in-law to break the news to
his wife, and he never saw or spoke to her again.) He was not a
lovable man and perhaps not an admirable one; one might even wonder
whether he deserves to be called "without doubt the nation's
greatest journalist." But he changed great events by his
participation in them or his opinions on them - and it makes for a
momentous story. (Kirkus Reviews)
Walter Lippmann began his career as a brilliant young man at
Harvard--studying under George Santayana, taking tea with William
James, a radical outsider arguing socialism with anyone who would
listen--and he ended it in his eighties, writing passionately about
the agony of rioting in the streets, war in Asia, and the collapse
of a presidency. In between he lived through two world wars, and a
depression that shook the foundations of American capitalism.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) has been hailed as the greatest
journalist of his age. For more than sixty years he exerted
unprecedented influence on American public opinion through his
writing, especially his famous newspaper column "Today and
Tomorrow." Beginning with The New Republic in the halcyon days
prior to Woodrow Wilson and the First World War, millions of
Americans gradually came to rely on Lippmann to comprehend the
vital issues of the day.
In this absorbing biography, Ronald Steel meticulously
documents the philosophers and politics, the friendships and
quarrels, the trials and triumphs of this man who for six decades
stood at the center of American political life. Lippmann's
experience spanned a period when the American empire was born,
matured, and began to wane, a time some have called "the American
Century." No one better captured its possibilities and wrote about
them so wisely and so well, no one was more the mind, the voice,
and the conscience of that era than Walter Lippmann: journalist,
moralist, public philosopher.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
