Men of Destiny / Edition 1

by Walter Lippmann

Overview

A great editorial commentator of the twentieth century, Walter Lippmann, was a major contributor to the central periodicals and journals of the age, including the Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, Harper's, the New Republic, Saturday Review, and Yale Review. Men of Destiny, a set of biographical essays on leading figures of Lippmann's day, is arguably the best single source for understanding the persons and the policies of the post-World War I period.In a series of vignettes, the reader is introduced into the lively world of Al Smith, Calvin Coolidge, William Jennings Bryan, H.L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, Warren Harding, Andrew Mellon, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The collection offers a rare glimpse of the first truly modern generation of American politics and society, and also a type of serious, detached writing that presumes a literate audience, but also one not given over to bias and hostility.The magic of this volume, however, is not in its litany of figures great and small, but Lippmann's comprehensive understanding of the place of America in world affairs. His essay on American imperialism remains a classic: "All the world thinks of the United States today as an empire, except the people of the United States." His advice to Americans is not to continue being evasive and grandiose with the rhetoric of equality, but to recognize the changing conditions and get on with the task of rule in as honorable a state as is possible by a holder of power.In his perceptive essays on the League of Nations, the efforts to outlaw war through international law, debt and reparations policies, Lippmann appeals to "time and a sense of reality" in examining all matters political. This volume, graced with a new introduction by Paul Roazen, will enable readers now well into the first decade of a new millennium to do just that.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765805140
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	04/30/2003
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) was the author of many books on political thought and was widely considered America’s most distinguished syndicated columnist. In addition to being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he won two Pulitzer Prizes for his newspaper column “Today and Tomorrow,” which appeared in the New YorkHerald Tribune.

Paul Roazen (1936-2005) was professor of social and political science at York University in Toronto. He was the author of Helene Deutsch and Brother Animal, both available from Transaction.

Table of Contents

Al Smith: a man of destiny — Calvin Coolidge: Puritanism de luxe — The causes of political indifference to-day — The Catholicism of Al Smith — Bryan and the dogma of majority rule — H.L. Mencken — Sinclair Lewis — The nature of the battle over censorship — An anticipation of Harding — An early estimate of Mr. McAdoo — Wilson and House — Borah — The outlawry of war — The greatness of Mr. Mellon — The Kellogg Doctrine: vested rights and nationalism in Latin America — Empire: the days of our nonage are over — Second best statesmen — To Justice Holmes.