Nicholas Miraculous: The Amazing Career of the Redoubtable Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler [Hardcover]

Michael Rosenthal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 2006

The extraordinary accomplishments of a great educator and even greater self-promoter

 

To those who loved him, like Teddy Roosevelt, he was "Nicholas Miraculous," the fabled educator who could do everything; to those who didn't, like Upton Sinclair, he was "the intellectual leader of the American plutocracy," a champion of "false and cruel ideals." Ezra Pound branded him "one of the more loathsome figures" of the age. Celebrated and reviled around the world, Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University for forty-four years, was a dominant personality for half a century. In this engrossing biography, Michael Rosenthal explores the many ways in which this extraordinary character seized and wielded power.

Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 while simultaneously president of Columbia University, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Butler imposed himself on America as did few others. Rosenthal's superbly researched, elegantly written narrative brings vividly to life the mania, narcissism, and genius that enabled "Dr. Butler" to transform Columbia into New York's major research university and at the same time to become an internationally recognized institution himself. Rich in social, cultural, and political insight, Nicholas Miraculous illuminates Butler's prodigious career and the complex nature of the age that nourished him.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Butler (1862–1947), one newspaper commented three years before he received the Nobel Prize (1931), was "the most lavishly decorated member of the human race." Upon his death, the New York Times described him as "one of the best known Americans of his generation the world over." However, many of Butler's projects—such as the College Entrance Examination Board—are as familiar as he is now forgotten. As president of Columbia University from 1902 to 1945, Butler nurtured the school's growth from small college to major research institution. His involvement in Republican politics brought the friendship (and later the enmity) of several presidents, and as president of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace (1925–1945), his international stature grew. Although Rosenthal, a former Columbia dean of students, attends to the personal affairs of this man absorbed by institutions, Butler's life remains one of meetings, memos and minutes. The author uses an abundance of archival and published material judiciously; his style is felicitous, and the tale is enlivened by in-fighting and occasional scandal. Manipulator? Manager? Opportunist? Idealist? Sycophant? Pioneer? Rosenthal's skill in rendering a complex life in an absorbing fashion reveals them all. 16 b&w illus., 13 political cartoons. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

The animating question of this biography is, How does a once-famous civic leader fall into oblivion? Nicholas Butler autocratically ruled Columbia University from 1902 to 1945. No university president today could dispose of institutional affairs in Butler's I-know-best manner. In some ways, he did know best, expanding Columbia from a college into a world-class university with professional graduate schools; sections duly recount Butler's fund-raising and stag-club networking. What extends Rosenthal's biography from institutional to general interest is Butler's life in public affairs, where he was prominent in the Republican Party, seeking its presidential nomination in 1920. He also presided over the Carnegie Endowment, gaining prestige (and the Nobel Peace Prize) for promoting idealistic schemes of peace. Fair to Butler but arch about his unapologetic, unwavering elitism, Rosenthal delivers a profile that is far livelier than its academic ambience would initially suggest. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1St Edition edition (January 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374299943
• ISBN-13: 978-0374299941
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,023,630 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Butler Did It, September 8, 2007

By 

Lowell P. Beveridge (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nicholas Miraculous: The Amazing Career of the Redoubtable Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler (Hardcover)

Nicholas Miraculous: the Amazing Career of the Redoubtable Dr. Nicholas Michael Rosenthal's biography of Nicholas Murray Butler was fascinating reading for me because of Butler's position as my father's boss and major influence on the social, political and academic world in which he lived during the 1930's and early 1940's (my formative years). It was a world of clubby collegiality for those on the inside, formal social affairs, conservative politics, anti-Semitism, and class and cultural snobbery. Attitudes towards Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Fascism and Hitler's Nazis ranged from admiration to toleration - at least up to the time of the invasion of Poland in 1939. The issue of Negroes on the faculty or in the student body was so far from Butler's concern or concept of the way things should be that it is not even mentioned in his biography. Faculty members were free to exercise academic freedom so long as they did not publicly challenge any of the basic principles of the world of Butler and his colleagues. Those who did, were dismissed or passed over for promotion.

My father often complained about the internal politics he had to deal with at Columbia and I had assumed that this was a problem endemic to all academic institutions, but after reading this book I get the impression that it was worse at Columbia than other places because of the personality and policies of Butler himself who was not a very good administrator.

4.0 out of 5 stars Miraculous Biography of Shaper of Columbia University, September 23, 2006

By 

Reinerlaw "reinerlaw" (New York NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nicholas Miraculous: The Amazing Career of the Redoubtable Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler (Hardcover)

Professor Rosenthal has done a superb job of evoking the persona of the man who built Columbia, using his 44-year tenure as university president. The author has even succeeded in evoking the reader's sympathies for Butler, a powerful leader who, viewed in today's lights, was an autocratic megalomaniac who missed many opportunities to build an even greater educational institution on Morningside Heights.

This biography will be of great interest to anyone who spent time at Columbia (or its sister institutions) during the 20th century -- the years during which Butler's influence was at its zenith. It provides, perhaps for the first time, a background for some of the University's admirable traditions, balanced, wisely, by a few rather embarassing episodes in its history.

3.0 out of 5 stars Nicholas Miraculous, July 14, 2006

By 

Harry W. O'Connor "Harryo" (Eastern Shore, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nicholas Miraculous: The Amazing Career of the Redoubtable Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler (Hardcover)

Well written, but of interest mostly to those who went to Columbia while he was president.