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A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950

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A Life in the 20th Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950 is the first volume of the memoirs of the noted historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. The book examines much of the nation's history in the first half of the twentieth century as well the author's anaylsis of public policy and his impressions of an extraordinary group of writers, politicians, intellectuals, and decision makers. Schlesinger is a name dropper extraordinaire in this volume and his vignettes on the people who crossed his path are interesting and inciteful and at times irreverent and caustic.

The book is a little long (557 pages). The parts concerning his early boyhood, books read, movies seen etc. can get tedious. However, his account of his trip around the world at age 16 with his father, also a noted historian, is facinating.

Schlesinger is an unabashed anti communist, New Deal style liberal. His first great book, The Age of Jackson, won the Pulitzer Prize. In it, as in later works, his sympathies, along with Jackson, lay with the working classes as opposed to the bastions of capital, aristocracy and monopoly. Schlesinger sees a pattern of similarity of reform between the Jacksonians, the Progressives of the early twentieth century, and the New Dealers. (His later books on FDR and JFK are exceedingly sypathetic treatments of his subjects as liberal realists.) This well researched and well written book is still used in college classes today. I read it in a graduate course on the age of Jackson in the late sixties.

After World War II, Schlesinger became one of the leaders of the non -communist left. His book, The Vital Center, written in 1949 was an appeal to liberal democracy, in opposition to the twin totalitarian systems of fascism and Stalinism. At the close of the present book, he states that his philosophy is still consistent with The Vital Center and he would make few changes in it even after fifty years.

In short, A Life in the 20th Century is a good read for history junkies. Schlesinger has been at the forefront of history and history makers and his insights on people and events are always enlightening and entertaining. I look forward to the publication of the second volume.

Professor Schlesinger's memoir is truly splendid, a well-rounded account of intellectual life in the first half of the 20th century. The New York Review of Books compared it to The Education of Henry Adams, which may be going a little too far. But it is a delightful book recalling a time when public intellectuals had a great impact on national life. I am by no means an unqualified fan of Professor Schlesinger. I agree with Judge Posner's harsh assessment of Professor Schlesinger's defense of President Clinton in "An Affair of State." But I found this book delightful. As with all of Professor Schlesinger's work, the style is engaging, and it is fascinating to see the great debates of the 1940's from the viewpoint of someone who was so passionately involved.

For aging baby bombers like myself, Arthur M. Schiesinger's A LIFE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY is a trip down memory lane. When I got the recorded version out of the library and realized it was 20 tapes, I figured that I would never finish it, barring a drive across country. However, the melodious voice of Nelson Runger, with whom I have traveled many miles with other recorded books, makes Schiesinger's story not only interesting but memorable.

The book relates much of Schiesinger's life and the hundreds of people that he had close contact with. Many of the people that he mentions are familiar. His war time experiences brought back memories of stories from my parents. There are hundreds of bits of Americana along with Scheisinger's insights into many famous incidents of the 20th century.

There are early glimpses of people who went on to be major figures in American politics and history.

I certainly don't know that I could have read all 680 plus pages of this work, but the 20 tapes passed very quickly and I really enjoyed it.

Schlesinger writes a book of personal recollections that reads much like a grandfather relating his rich and rewarding life onto his next generation. It is not a hard facts history book, and it will not be remembered as such (regardless of Dr. Kissenger's overly optimistic review on the dust jacket).

There are high points and low points to this book. His experiences at Harvard, worn torn Europe, and the ideological battles between communists and liberals over control of the American left were fascinating. However, we are also privy to every movie, play, book, and cocktail dinner that schlesinger ever attended. It's interesting to gain this perspective, but it gets tedious. This book could have used substantial editing.

I'm a Schlesinger fan, but I skimmed through many pages. Despite these shortcoming, Schlesinger still imparts his genious.

Arthur Schlesing is one of the great thinkers of the 20th century -- a skillful historian, an energetic intellectual, an accomplished writer. He's a man who could have coined the phrase "been there, done that." If you want to see America's century through enlightened eyes, you'll want to read this book . . and share it with a friend!

I first came across Schlesinger when, as a boy, I read with fascination his story of the Kennedy White House, "A Thousand Days". Even then however, I felt that his style was long winded and somewhat self serving. I do not mean to carp, but to judge from what is only the first installment of his memoirs, it looks as if things haven`t changed much since.

That is not to say that this isn`t a useful memoir, merely that it could have been a lot shorter. He has some great anecdotes to tell, particularly from a trip aroung the world he took with his parents when he was fifteen or sixteen. However, even at this early stage one gets the impression of a precocious pain in the backside. One wonders if a great deal of change occurred in the intervening period. In fairness to him, he does acknowledge this side of his personality when he tells us that he once told his mother(!) that she had no right to her opinion as she didn`t know what she was talking about.

Aside from a few well told anecdotes, the best and most rewarding sections of this memoir are those dealing with the writing of "The Age of Jackson" and the struggle in the post war years for control of the moderate American left. Even here, unfortunately, the detail becomes wearying. He winds up with a passionate re-enunciation of the priciples of his book "The Vital Center". This is interesting stuff and could have used a bit more elaboration at the expense of some of the earlier sections of the book.

In the end it is probaly these early sections that are in need of most pruning. One wonders, for example, why he thought it necessary to tell the reader in great deatail about his childhood reading or the movies he watched as a teenager. He even quotes a few of his adolescent attempts at movie and theatre reviewing. He does a little better when dealing with the war years, though here again, the constant name dropping and the at times supercillious attitude get in the way.

Put simply, this volume is way too long and in places rather tedious. Half the length and half the talk of innocent beginnings, and this would have been a much more readable memoir.

Arthur Schlesinger is one of the pre-eminent American historians of the 20th century. He is a winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, for The Age of Jackson (1946) and A Thousand Days (1966), Schlesinger's account of the Kennedy administration for whom he was a special assistant.

The man has seen and experienced a lot which is why this memoir is so interesting and in many ways enlightening. Born in 1917, he claims his motivation for writing this memoir is that he should do it while he "can still remember anything."

The reader need have no fear that Schlesinger is losing anything. The level of recall and sometimes even minutia in the book is astonishing. Much of his source is journals and diaries that he seems to have kept religiously.

A Life in the 20th Century is a very enjoyable read partly because of excellent content but also due to some wonderfully descriptive prose. Schlesinger's ability to paint pictures of characters is a lesson in communication. Friends of his father - also a historian - were "brilliant and effervescent," "dour and trenchant," "jovially caustic."

Schlesinger's memoir also shows how much western society (U.S. particularly) matured during the century in question. The level of Puritanism, distrust, isolationism and racism which permeated the first half of the century has to a great extent dissipated.
Schlesinger write, "As late as 1939, the Gallup poll reported that a third of respondents thought it indecent for men to appear topless" on the beach. The level of Anglophobia during the thirties is difficult to comprehend today, given as in Margaret Thatcher's famous phrase "the special relationship" between the United States and England. However, there was a virulent anti-British mood, motivated mainly by a belief that the U.S. had been hoodwinked into the First World War. Schlesinger suggests that the level of debate between the isolationists and those who wished to take on Hitler was more vicious and aggressive than even the national debate over Vietnam.

As an Irish person, it is illustrative to read that the great black scholar and activist, W.E.B Du Bois wrote in his memoir, quoted by Schlesinger, that "the racial angle was more clearly defined against the Irish than against me."

The chapter on `The Thirties' is particularly evocative. Hitler's shadow looms ominously through the decade. "We danced the night through, my English friends not knowing when they would dance again, the purple shadows fell, and Hitler's clock ticked steadily on."

Just how close the world came to domination by totalitarian regimes - fascist or communist - can be gauged by the fact that by the end of 1940, there were only a dozen democracies in the world.

The liberal Schlesinger is an avowed anti-communist who paints a very vibrant picture of the anti-communist fervor that ran through America after the war. While writing very critically about communist intrigue, he does give a number of American communists credit for believing - however wrongly, that the best future for mankind was in communism. Schlesinger never hides his anti-communism. Sometimes this interferes with his objectivity about individuals e.g. he describes former Communist Party USA chief Earl Browder in the following terms, "The benign exterior was marred by a pair of shifty eyes.... Each word carefully planned and followed by a crafty smile. His face had an overcrowded look - not enough room between forehead and chin for eyes and nose." Not what I would call objective!

The author's personality does not come through in the memoir. He does make a number of references to being, or being seen as a rather pompous individual, given to outbursts of anger. There are also very few humorous examples or references in what is generally a very good read. Indeed the only sections where I lost interest were when he referenced the innumerable social occasions, local personalities and the very many `dear friends' he got to meet.

All in all, well worth reading if you want to get a good overview of US and world politics during a very traumatic time. It has definitely given me the motivation to read other works from a fine historian and wonderful writer. Not sure if that is how Arthur M. Schlesinger wants to be remembered though.

I was really cought up by this book, as the eminent historian (his The Age of Jackson was the best book I read in 1987)tells of his ancestors and his early liefe. I found his account of his growing up, the books he read, the things he did, the world he lived in vividly described and I could not put the book down. His account of his trip around the world at age 16-17 was very well told, and I thought it could have been expanded with benefit. His account of his years as a student also held high interest, and his time in World War II, like most accounts of "my war" are high in attention-holding. The book begins to pall a little in the account of the time from 1945 to 1950, maybe because it is better known to those of us who lived thru the time and knew of the author's activities during those years--tho his political views and mine I must admit coincided then and still do. So that helps. It is true that he name-drops but I was fascinated by the people he knew and by how many "dear friends" he has. If he knew me I would be glad to read about what he thought of me--and most of what he has to say is not bad. I think this is a great book, and his next volume, which will include his years with Kennedy, will also be great reading, provided they tell us something not told in A Thousand Days--tho, since I read that book in October of 1966, he can no doubt depend on my not remembering too much of what I read then, and so some repetition is in order.

As a Schesinger fan, I found this book a delightful insight into the life of the best living historian. The book was very well written, and as a current college student, I found his account of his college years particularly interesting.

I would especially recommend this book to anyone interested in either twentieth century history or twentienth century American culture.

Art Schlesinger (1917-2007) is a name well-known to any student of politics.

Most notably a name associated with the Kennedys, Schlesinger documents the activities of the U.S. government for a specific window of history. He also gives us a rare peek into the personal lives of the movers and shakers of the period, ending around 1950, and especially of era Democrats.

Schlesinger was a great fan of Felix Frankfurter, an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and researchers should consider this book as an excellent source of information on that significant jurist.

This 2000 work is a fine read and Schlesinger was a great apologist for the root thinking behind the Democrat platform to this very day. I wish his book would have continued on chronologically but for the slot of time discussed, this volume is a rare political treasure. Recommended.