Anyone of my generation who studied history at the university level cannot have survived their college years without reading the work of Arthur M. Schlesinger, one of the great historians of the age.

Schlesinger, who was also an active liberal who worked in the Kennedy Administration, has died.

n his 89 years, Arthur M. Schlesinger was a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a Kennedy insider, and an influential thinker who helped define mainstream liberalism during the Cold War.

"(He had) enormous stamina and a kind of energy and drive which most people don't have, and it kept him going, all the way through his final hours," Schlesinger's son Stephen said early Thursday morning, hours after his father's death. "He never stopped writing, he never stopped participating in public affairs, he never stopped having his views about politics and his love of this nation."

Schlesinger was dining with family members in Manhattan on Wednesday when he suffered a heart attack, Stephen Schlesinger said. He later died at New York Downtown Hospital.

Schlesinger was among the most famous historians of his time, and was widely respected as learned and readable, with a panoramic vision of American culture and politics. He received a National Book Award for "Robert Kennedy and His Times" and both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer for "A Thousand Days," his memoir/chronicle of President Kennedy's administration. He also won a Pulitzer, in 1946, for "The Age of Jackson," his landmark chronicle of Andrew Jackson's administration.

Indeed, it is the work on the Jackson administration that first introduced me to Schlesinger, some 35 years after it was published. It remains a classic in the field of American history.

Quite frankly, I don't have the words to express the sense of loss I feel upon the passing of this intellectual giant.

Posted by: Greg at 11:15 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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