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Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., a distinguished historian and public intellectual, has written an engaging autobiography of his first thirty-three years. Coming from a privileged background, Schlesinger attended Exeter and Harvard, and studied at Cambridge on the eve of the Second World War. Throughout his very active and well-traveled career, he came to know many of the leading politicians, intellectuals, scholars, and personalities of the 1930s and 1940s. An ardent Democrat and New Dealer, Schlesinger had an insider’s view of the struggle between American liberalism and Communism and the triumph of interventionism over isolationism. Despite service in World War II, he completed writing the Age of Jackson in 1945, which won the Pulitzer Prize. The book is full of historical insights. Schlesinger has never been shy about expressing his opinions, and some of his sharpest observations are directed at his own misjudgments and shortcomings.

Reviewed by Jeffrey J. C., NC Division of Archives & History

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