A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950

by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

A memoir of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian considers events that occurred during his lifetime and that contributed to America's rise to world power status, as told through his personal experiences in childhood, in college, and during war times. 50,000 first printing.

Genres: Memoir, History, Biography, Nonfiction, Politics, American History, Biography Memoir

684 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger, was a Pulitzer Prize recipient and American historian and social critic whose work explored the liberalism of American political leaders including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. He served as special assistant and "court historian" to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy Administration, from the transition period to the president's state funeral, titled A Thousand Days. In 1968, he actively supported the presidential campaign of Senator Robert F. Kennedy until Kennedy's assassination in the Ambassador Hotel on June 5, 1968, and wrote the biography Robert Kennedy and His Times several years later.

He popularized the term "imperial presidency" during the Nixon administration by writing the book The Imperial Presidency.

His father was also a well-known historian.

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected a lot more from this book, especially since Schlesinger was a famous historian and worked in the Kennedy administration (he wrote celebrated biographies of John and Bobby Kennedy). This memoir only covered the first 33 years of his life, so maybe a book on his latter years would be better. But this book is a huge exercise in name dropping. We learn not only the name of the headmaster of his prep school, but also the names of the headmasters of all the other famous prep schools. Every professor he ever had at prep school or at Harvard gets a half page explanation of who they were and what they did, as does everybody he ever worked with or was in the war with or was in his social circle. Schlesinger was an intellectual, so there’s a lot of social philosophy and economic theory in the book. There’s a reason I didn’t like either philosophy or economics in college.

[Sydney · Rating 2 out of 5]

An autobiography peppered with historical references. Well written, but dry. I could not relate to Schlesinger's experiences which made it difficult to stay interested in the book. I still want to read his historical analyses, as I think he is probably a better historian than memoir writer.

[Dennis · Rating 2 out of 5]

As historians go, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, was purported to be an excellent one, with two Pulitzers won before his death. However, this memoir has precious little historical value; he brushed briefly with a lot of figures in this part of his life but, as they say, he wasn’t in the room where history was made. So, this book just amounts a lot of name-dropping accompanied by a lot of rants and raves about what history encompasses, as well as frequent bouts of rabid anti-Communism where he “shows” where famous Communists and Socialists of his time were mistaken and how they eventually repented (if they were smart and / or honest) and admitted that Arthur was right all along. Another of his rants is against revisionism although he admits to revisionism in his Pulitzer-winning book about Jacksonian democracy. (Actually, he did what a lot of historians do, take a look back on historical records – in this case, the Andrew Jackson presidency - and analyze them out of the fervor of the time.) He just didn’t seem to like anyone who disagreed with him but historians, like documentary film-makers, do a lot of picking and choosing to make a coherent account and dissonant voices just screw things up.

As I said, there’s a lot of name-dropping, all of his friends and colleagues from Harvard, all of whom were wildly successful and wrote definitive books I’ve never heard of – not surprising as I don’t read a lot of history – or wrote things which may be more impressive to others. (Contributors to dictionaries, for example.) There are a lot of esoteric arguments on history and the nature of writing history which I must admit I don’t care much about. Rather than being enlightening, it seemed more self-aggrandizing than anything else and it reminded me of a lot of professors who’d go off on a tangent without much attention or interest in whether anyone else was listening or cared.

The book was mildly interesting at parts, particularly when real history was at the center, but he was still fairly young, 33, when this ends in 1950 and while he alludes to the Kennedy years in his future, he hadn’t gotten there yet. Although he was married at the time, his first wife barely gets a mention so personal scandal is omitted. (Good.) But it’s all very upper-class as courting her was interrupted by her being in an “understanding” while she was in China, and then her going off to Central America before he could pin her down. During the Great Depression, he didn’t suffer much either as his father took a year’s sabbatical (from Harvard, of course) and took the family around the world. I don’t recall many historical accounts like that so maybe I’ve been reading the wrong people but it just seemed such an incredibly egocentric book that I had trouble plowing through it. Nothing here I would want to know about.

P.S. Just remembered another vaguely amusing part which annoyed me when I was reading this. Poor Mr Schlesinger suffered from "Grumpy Old Man" Syndrome. When he wrote this, he was 73, I think; this meant he complained about the music and films of his youth, in the 30's, were the best ever. Furthermore, none of the music today would be remembered 50 years later. (I'll have to tell the Beatles and the Stones to hang it up becuase no one remembers them. Elvis? Elvis who?) Plus, the films today have no relevance to everyday life like those of his time did. Well, I suppose if you are a condescending Harvard professor who's brushed up against the world events of your time and now have a stick up your ass, you might have a point....

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was mostly disappointed with this book, which I found to be too self laudatory for my taste, and chock full of descriptions of 20th Century events which, somehow, the author just knew in advance would turn out the way they did. I liked his descriptions of his early education and his interests in books and films as a youth. And I found his reporting of the post WWII events in America informative. But ultimately, the things I liked about the book were overwhelmed by all that I did not like.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

The lengthy but lighthearted memior recounting the first half of the life of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Aside from charming anecdotes and insighful stories, this book contains Schlesinger's remembrance of the golden age of US cinema (along with enough obscure titles to fill a Netflix cue for the better part of a year), a charming paen to the martini (always with gin and very dry), and some excellent insights into the state of the American psyche before and during World War II.

[Barker · Rating 2 out of 5]

So much name dropping! interferes with the flow of the book. Hard to read with the interruption of the who's who that no one cares about. If you made a drinking game of drink every time a name is dropped you would be in the morgue by the end of chapter 2. He also has has a life with a silver spoon and doesn't seem to connect with the common man.

[Samuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elites in regard to their enemies.

[Barbara]

NYT Best 50 Memoirs

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

2006 Christmas present from Jennie.