Maverick's Progress: An Autobiography [Paperback]

James T. Flexner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1996

National book Award laureate; recipient of Special Pulitzer Prize citation; winner of the Life in America Prize the Archives of American Art Award; among many others, James Thomas Flexner has written with distinction about American history and art. He has penetrated many of the charactrers who have shaped history exposing the intricacies of not only the historical figure, but the man beneath the marble image. The range of Flexner's subjects is wide: painters, inventors, doctors, loyalists, traitors, and spies, such luminaries as George Washington, Benedict Arnold, Alexander Hamilton, and John Singleton Copley, are among those Flexner has taken as subjects. After over fifty years of writnig, Flexner, one of America's greatest chroniclers has turned his probing eye back on to the pages of his own life with the same honesty, frankness, wit which have come to signify his form. James Thomas Flexner was born in 1908 on Lexington Avenue, New York City to parents Helen Thomas and Simon Flexner (scientist and first director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical research.) Published in the literary magazine at the Lincoln High School, Flexner's passion for writing was spawned at a young age. This passion would become a source of life long struggle as well as success for Flexner. Journalist for the Herald Tribune, and foremost biographer (as well as making numerous appearances on radio and television,) Flexner's career allowed him access into the quick of the political, social, and artistic movements and developments that shaped the twentieth century. An un-traditional student, Flexner, although graduating magna com laude from Harvard University, often pursued what was to be considered by academics, unorthodox methods of research for his work. Following the passion of his own interests and plotting his own course of research and study, Flexner created of himself a sort of maverick, chartign a course for biography that countered that written in the guide books of academe. While he probed and uncovered the lives of the great men who shaped the past, noteworthy publishers, writers, artists, and politicians of the twentieth century fill the pages of Maverick's Progress. Flexner writes of how influences, acquantances, and friends such as Bernard Berenson, Conrad Aiken, Ivy Lee, Harry Hopkins, Allan Nevins, Logan Pearsall Smith, and Edward Hopper figured in his life, and in his development as a writer. James Flexner has authored more than twenty books, several of them have been recently re-published by Fordham University Press. He was awarded the Gold Medal for Eminence in Biography, by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1988. He is perhaps most well known for his four-volume biography of George Washington which was eventually condensed into one: An Indispensable Man from which two television mini-series have been produced and for which he was awared the Peabody Award and Emmy Nomination. Maverick's Progress offers us a candid an sparkling look into the life of a writer who has indeed been a maverick in the canon of American historians - an individual who himself has been an Indispensable Man.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Flexner, historian, art critic, award-winning biographer of George Washington, Benedict Arnold and Alexander Hamilton, calls himself a maverick, and indeed this convivial autobiography, written with great charm and style, reveals an individualist who goes his own way. Born in 1908 in Manhattan, he learned skepticism from his father, Simon, medical scientist and first director of the Rockefeller Institute. His mother, Helen Thomas, taught composition at Bryn Mawr, where her "domineering" sister, M. Carey Thomas, was president. Flexner started out as a poet, then became a Herald Tribune city news reporter. In Florence, Bernard Berenson (whose wife was a first cousin of Flexner's mother) taught the young Harvard-educated historian how to scrutinize paintings. Flexner went on to write popular studies of painters Thomas Cole, John Singleton Copley and Benjamin West that revitalized interest in early American art. He writes affectingly of his 45-year marriage to second wife pianist Beatrice Hudson, of the biographer's craft and of how he overcame dyslexia and obsessive phobias. Illustrated.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Maverick's Progress chronicles the life of American historian James Thomas Flexner. He graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University, but never received any degrees specific to the subjects about which he wrote. Flexner was born and raised in Manhattan, sill calling the upper east side his home. He writes about his development as a writer; his experiences as a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune; the progression of the books he published; and the passion and struggle which accompanied each, from "Doctors on Horseback" in 1937 to "An American Saga" in 1984. He writes at length about his magisterial four-volume biography of George Washington (1965-72) and the one-volume study that followed it: "The Indispensable Man" (1974). Flexner discusses his methodology as a biographer; he tells of the triumphs and difficulties he encountered as a writer and a researcher, and of the trials and tribulations of publishing twenty-five books. In Maverick's Progress we learn of Flexner's experiences as advisor to the historical sites Mount Vernon and Colonial Williamsburg, as trustee to the New York Public Library, and as president of PEN and the Society of American Historians. Flexner writes of his longtime relationship with art scholar Bernard Berenson, artists Edward Hopper and Willem de Kooning; about his parents; his tempestuous affair with a Welsh girl while in Europe as a young man; of his first wife, Agnes Halsey, and of Beatrice Hudson, his wife of forty-five years. Maverick's Progress offers a candid and penetrating look into the life and methods of a writer who has indeed been a maverick among biographers and historians. An individual who himself has been to the canon of American history, an indispensable man. -- Midwest Book Review --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 510 pages
• Publisher: Fordham University Press (January 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823216616
• ISBN-13: 978-0823216611
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,974,698 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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