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Deal and to keep totalitarian temptations at bay. In
The Disuniting of
America
(1991) he questioned the merits of multiculturalism, asking
whether the celebration of ethnic particularism was not in fact a way of
impoverishing America's civic culture. His memoirs help tie his many
books not only to his life but to the period in which he came of age. One
can only hope that further volumes will ensue.
Schlesinger's story of lost innocence recapitulates certain classic
American themes. One is the journey from the provinces to the city;
another is the conflict between American optimism and historical real–
ity. The latter theme, for Schlesinger, comprises a dilemma of American
liberalism. Writing that his generation was taught to believe in the good–
ness of human nature, the beneficence of reform and education, he
observes that "these were the premises of goodhearted, hopeful Ameri–
can liberalism in the style of John Dewey." The progressivism of
Woodrow Wilson or John Dewey proved inadequate to a world shaped
by Stalin and Hitler, compelling the conclusion that "human nature had
dark depths beyond the reach of conventional liberalism. "
From this conventional liberalism one might posit a conventional
intellectual biography for Schlesinger's generation. First came the liberal
idealism, which began to diminish in the aftermath of World War I and
the failure of the League of Nations. The retrograde politics of the
192os-economic boom, Republican Presidents, and Prohibition-ori–
ented attention towards the Modernist revolution in culture until the
crash of 1929 set off a decade of radical enthusiasm . With the Popular
Front, an effort to unite liberal and radical opposition to fascism, liberal
idealism could be resurrected and given a Soviet slant. Finally, the cata–
strophe of Stalinism forced American liberals to reckon with their own
optimism. They might limit this optimism to the New Deal; they might
reverse their politics and become conservative optimists; or they might
become disillusioned with politics altogether.
Schlesinger's autobiography is provocative to the extent that it defies
any such conventional narratives. The first exception to convention was
Schlesinger's father, also an eminent American historian, who was a life–
long progressive without a na·IOve belief in progress. His theory that
American history moves cyclically between radicalism and conservatism
and not towards any glorious end would resonate in the thought of his
son. A second mentor was Perry Miller, who taught Schlesinger when he
was a Harvard undergraduate. A distinguished historian of the Puritans,
Miller imbued his student with an "anguished awareness of human fini–
tude, failure, guilt, corruptibility, the precariousness of existence and the
challenge of moral responsibility." Both Miller and Schlesinger were
