Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest

by Walter Lippmann, William E. Leuchtenburg (Introduction), Ganesh Sitaraman (Foreword by)

Overview

In 1914, a brilliant young political journalist published a book arguing that the United States had entered a period of “drift”—a lack of control over rapidly changing forces in society. He highlighted the tensions between expansion and consolidation, traditionalism and progressivism, and emotion and rationality. He wrote to convince readers that they could balance these tensions: they could be organized, efficient, and functional without sacrificing impulse, choice, or liberty. Mastery over drift is attainable, Walter Lippmann argued, through diligent attention to facts and making active choices. Democracy, Lippman wrote, is “a use of freedom, an embrace of opportunity.”
            Lippman’s Drift and Mastery became one of the most important and influential documents of the Progressive Movement. It remains a valuable text for understanding the political thought of early twentieth-century America and a lucid exploration of timeless themes in American government and politics. Distinguished historian Walter Leuchtenberg’s 1986 introduction and notes are retained in this edition.

            Ganesh Sitaraman, who has provided a foreword for this centennial edition, suggests that Lippmann’s classic still has much to say to twenty-first-century progressives. The underlying solutions for our time, he believes, are similar to those of Lippman’s era. Sitaraman contends that American society can regain mastery over drift by reforming finance and reducing inequality, by rethinking the relationship between corporations and workers, and by embracing changes in social life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299304836
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	05/13/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	194
File size:	322 KB

About the Author

Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) was an American public intellectual, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, and widely read columnist on American politics and foreign policy. He cofounded the New Republic magazine, advised several presidents, and notably was the first to popularize the term “cold war,” in his 1947 book The Cold War. William E. Leuchtenburg is the William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ganesh Sitaraman is an assistant professor at Vanderbilt Law School and former policy director and senior counsel to candidate and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

Table of Contents

Foreword

 

Walter Lippmann's Drift and Mastery           

Introduction               

 

Part One

1 The Themes of Muckraking           

2 New Incentives                   

3 The Magic of Property                   

4 Caveat Emptor                    

5 A Key to the Labor Movement                  

6 The Funds of Progress                    

"A Nation of Villagers"                      

 

Part Two

8 A Big World and Little Men           

9 Drift                        

10 The Rock of Ages             

 

Part Three

11 A Note on the Women's Movement         

12 Bogeys                              

13 Poverty, Chastity, Obedience      

14 Mastery                

15 Modern Communion                    

16 Fact and Fancy

Editorial Reviews

“For readers who are interested in the history of ideas and in twentieth-century politics, Drift and Mastery will make fascinating reading. It is brief and easy to read, and yet it has depth of thought. Lippmann’s masterful writing style and the pungent statements he uses to define the issues of his time are remarkable for a young man in his early twenties.”—The Social Science Journal

“Devilishly well-written . . . altogether a delightful fresh piece of writing and thinking.”—Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“Impressively well written . . . this new Centennial Edition of a timeless classic 20th-century political science treatise is now available to a whole new generation of appreciative readers. . . . Very strongly recommended for community and academic library collections in political science, American history, and journalism.”—Midwest Book Review

From the Publisher