richard hofstadter influenced by

[24] Hofstadter expressed his dislike of the term consensus historian several times,[25] and criticized Boorstin for overusing the consensus and ignoring the essential conflicts in history. "[48], Angered by the radical politics of the 1960s, and especially by the student occupation and temporary closure of Columbia University in 1968, Hofstadter began to criticize student activist methods. ———. Columbia University professor Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970), one of the preeminent historians of the 20th century, is the subject of a series published by the Library of America that’s edited by Sean Wilentz, Princeton’s George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History. Endnotes BrANCH invited SHGAPE to help organize the conference. The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It. [a] He explored subconscious motives such as social status anxiety, anti-intellectualism, irrational fear, and paranoia as they propel political discourse and action in politics. 6George E. Mowry, review of The Age of Reform in Mississippi Valley Historical Review 42 (March 1956): 769. America at 1750. In undergraduate classes, he read aloud the draft of his next book. by Robert Brent Toplin. [6], Hofstadter was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1916 to a Jewish father, Emil A. Hofstadter, and a German-American Lutheran mother, Katherine (née Hill), who died when Richard was ten.[7]. Change ). Richard Hofstader's last book, written in 1968, was a look back at the great Progressive-era historians who influenced his work and, more so than any subsequent generation of historians, the debates of the public at large in their era. After 1945 Hofstadter philosophically broke with Charles A. The Paranoid Style in American Politics. [19], In a widely held revision of this view, Christopher Lasch wrote that unlike the "consensus historians" of the 1950s, Hofstadter saw the consensus of classes on behalf of business interests not as a strength but "as a form of intellectual bankruptcy and as a reflection, moreover, not of a healthy sense of the practical but of the domination of American political thought by popular mythologies. 425–431 (7 pages) Hofstadter, influenced by his wife, was a member of the Young Communist Leaguein college, and in April 1938 he joined the Communist Party of the USA; he quit in 1939. Some, such as Eric McKitrick and Stanley Elkins, were more conservative than he; Hofstadter had few disciples and founded no school of history writing.[56][57]. [12], Hofstadter earned his PhD in 1942. History News Network – October 7, 2013 . His untimely passing came while working on a three-volume set on American political culture in 1970. "[30] Hofstadter's style was so powerful and engrossing that professors kept assigning the book long after scholars had revised or rejected its main points. Christopher Lasch. 1948. From John D. Rockefeller: “The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest…. "The End of Ideology Thesis." March 8, 1973 issue. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. Reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1966. Conservatism rose on a tide of votes cast by people irritated by the liberalism of condescension. Lloyd C. Gardner, <"Consensus history and foreign policy." By Richard Hofstadter. The impact of these years created his orientation to the American past, accompanied as it was by marriage, establishment of life-style, and choice of profession. It would have been interesting and fun to have been in one of his classes. Hofstadter was every bit as part of the history in which he wrote, and was especially quite at home in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Anti-Intellectualism in American Life written in 1962. He was influenced by his friend sociologist, Reviewed Work: Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography by David S. Brown III: From Reconstruction to the Present Day, 1864-1981. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Follow WORLD WAR II HISTORY on WordPress.com. (1971; published after the author’s passing), Hofstadter’s Consensus View Relevant Today He was disillusioned by the spectacle of the Moscow Show Trials, but wrote: "I join without enthusiasm but with a sense of obligation... my fundamental reason for joining is that I don't like capitalism and want to get rid of it. Hofstadter had been reluctant to join, knowing the orthodoxy it imposed on intellectuals, telling them what to believe and what to write. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. In 1944, he published his dissertation Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915. 5D. Hofstadter’s writing on historical issues spanned the three decades of the 40s, 50s and 60s. (1962) These five contributions to historical thought have defined Hofstadter as historian and provide a showcase for the liberal consensus view. in, Harp, Gillis. [8]  Hofstadter’s writing in this second literary contribution borders on cynicism and provocation but never loses its brilliance. Marx, Leo. He attended the Fosdick-Masten Park High School in Buffalo. Hofstadter planned to write a three-volume history of American society, but at his death had only completed the first volume, America at 1750: A Social Portrait (1971). Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. In this matter, the stress is on the importance of Jefferson's writings, and of his followers, in the development of agrarianism in the US, as establishing the agrarian myth, and its importance, in American life and politics—despite the rural and urban industrialization that rendered the myth moot. 1955. Each of Hofstadter’s books bore an … Richard Hofstadter, in his Pulitzer-winning history of the Populist and Progressive movements, ... Lippmann further illustrated how public opinion is influenced on most issues: “The public will arrive in the middle of the third act and will leave before the last curtain, having stayed just long enough perhaps to decide who is the hero and who is the villain of the piece. etc. [26] In an earlier draft of the preface he wrote:[27]. I: From Settlement to Revolution, 1584-1776. Social Darwinism, Hofstadter’s first slice of brilliance written in 1944 as his doctoral dissertation holds the most promise as a single body of work and one that could have easily been revised and marketed today. Balancing views of anti-Semitism against this backdrop opened up criticism from those close to him before the book’s publication: “A full history of modern anti-Semitism in the United States would reveal, I believe, its substantial Populist lineage…” [12] Despite his harsh tone of the agrarian society and the farmers the book was still well-received among historians. At times his writing may have breached the dreaded barriers of bias, challenged by his own passion and closeness to the subject matter. Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1952. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Images, Youtube and more on IDCrawl - the leading free people search engine. By the early 1950s, Hofstadter had been unhappy for some time with the central assumptions of the "Progressive historians," most notably Charles Richard Hofstadter’s Pulitzer Prize winning The Age of Reform from 1955 still resonates today: “The Age of Reform, Columbia historian Alan Brinkley declared thirty years after its 1955 publication, ‘is the most influential book ever published on the history of twentieth-century America.’ It remains in our own day a sparkling achievement in historical analysis, widely read, provocative, and persuasive.” [11]. Hofstadter’s work figured prominently in my required readings for my undergraduate degree in the mid ’70s. Richard Hofstadter’s career as a professional historian paralleled the heyday of twentieth-century liberalism (1933-68). "[4] Others see in his work an early critique of the one-dimensional society, as Hofstadter was equally critical of socialist and capitalist models of society, and bemoaned the "consensus" within the society as "bounded by the horizons of property and entrepreneurship",[4] criticizing the "hegemonic liberal capitalist culture running throughout the course of American history".[5]. "[46] Alfred Kazin identified his use of parody: "He was a derisive critic and parodist of every American Utopia and its wild prophets, a natural oppositionist to fashion and its satirist, a creature suspended between gloom and fun, between disdain for the expected and mad parody. [28], In 1948 he published The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It, interpretive studies of 12 major American political leaders from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Beard and moved to the right, becoming leader of the "consensus historians", a term that Hofstadter disliked, but it was widely applied to his rejection of the Beardian idea that there was a fundamental conflict running throughout American history that pitted economic classes against each other. Or is it better that Hofstadter and his genius remain fixed to their place in history, just as the greatness of Roosevelt and his post-war vision was never tested? Although Hofstadter quickly became disillusioned with the Communist Party, he retained an independent left-wing standpoint well into the 1940s. America’s evolution from an agricultural society to that of more industrialized culture and society provides the impetus for the continued rise in educational attainment as Hofstadter sees it. Hofstadter broke new historiographical ground by exploring sociological structures (perhaps influenced by his friend C. Wright Mills) and by probing unconscious psychological motives, status anxieties, irrational hatreds, and finally paranoia as political motivators. [9] The Buffalo Jewish Hall of Fame lists him as one of the "Jewish Buffalonians who have made a lasting contribution to the world. [21] Making explicit reference to Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Cleveland, Bryan, Wilson, and Hoover, Hofstadter made a statement on the consensus in the American political tradition that has been seen as "ironic":[22], The fierceness of the political struggles has often been misleading: for the range of vision embraced by the primary contestants in the major parties has always been bounded by the horizons of property and enterprise. Reprint, New York: Vintage, 1982. "[29] Each chapter title illustrated a paradox: Thomas Jefferson is "The Aristocrat as Democrat"; John C. Calhoun is the "Marx of the Master Class"; and Franklin Roosevelt is "The Patrician as Opportunist. He wrote several major works, e.g. [40] Hofstadter had been reluctant to join, knowing the orthodoxy it imposed on intellectuals, telling them what to believe and what to write. Hofstadter rejected Beard's interpretation of history as a succession of exclusively economically motivated group conflicts and financial interests of politicians. Issue. He is opposed to almost everything that has happened in American politics in the past twenty years.”. Hofstadter’s political analysis of the Populist to Progressive movements in The Age of Reform is highlighted by the industrialization of America and this transitional phase. 1958. Richard Hofstadter’s (Aug. 6, 1916 – October 24, 1970) influence and school of thought as a “consensus historian” and noted intellectual of the 1950s has stature and relevance today. They trace the direct political and ideological lineage between the Populists and anti-communist Senator Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism, the political paranoia manifest in his time. ———. "Hofstadter's 'The Age of Reform' and the Crucible of the Fifties,". ( Log Out /  Lyons on June 17, 2012 in Historians. He believes himself to be living in a world in which he is spied upon, plotted against, betrayed, and very likely destined for total ruin. [55] As a senior professor at a leading graduate university, Hofstadter directed more than 100 finished doctoral dissertations but gave his graduate students only cursory attention; he believed this academic latitude enabled them to find their own models of history. The legacy left by Hofstadter is two-fold: he was very much an actor in the history of which he wrote. Conservative critics, such as Irwin G. Wylie and Robert C. Bannister, disagreed with his interpretation. He would have relished revising Anti-Intellectualism in American Life for example, arguably his greatest work, to include the current cultural, social, and political chaos in America. Further, the very lack of confidence in the American future and of a positive program of ideas increases popular faith in the wonder-working powers of the great man.” [9], In this post-war period now devoid of Roosevelt’s vision, Hofstadter gains solid footing as an historian and intellectual. ( Log Out /  Most comfortable in academia, Hofstadter decided against a family-influenced entry into law school in favor of graduate and doctoral study at Columbia University in New York following graduation from the University of Buffalo. Among them were Herbert Gutman, Eric Foner, Lawrence W. Levine, Linda Kerber, and Paula S. Fass. [16], From 1942 to 1946 Hofstadter taught history at the University of Maryland, where he became a close friend of the popular sociologist C. Wright Mills and read extensively in the fields of sociology and psychology, absorbing ideas of Max Weber, Karl Mannheim, Sigmund Freud, and the Frankfurt School. This page was last edited on 16 February 2021, at 22:28. 1962. vi + 328 pp. Richard Hofstadter, in the Saturday Review, Oct. 12, 1955, p. 12. Richard Hofstadter had considerable influence on American historiography and intellectual life. He was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize, first in 1956 for The Age of Reform, an analysis of the populism movement in the 1890s and the progressive movement of the early 20th century; and then in 1964 for the cultural history Anti-intellectualism in American Life. He could never share their simplistic, moralistic approach. Influenced by his wife, Hofstadter was a member of the Young Communist League in college, and in April 1938 he joined the Communist Party of the USA; he quit in 1939. 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