Henry Steele Commager

Commager, Henry Steele - kŏmˈĭjər, 1902–98, American historian, b. Pittsburgh, Pa. He received his Ph.D. from the Univ. of Chicago in 1928 and taught history at New York Univ. (1926–38), Columbia (1938–56), and Amherst (1956–94). He was an outspoken opponent of both McCarthyism (see McCarthy, Joseph R.) and the Vietnam War. His writings Read More...

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Henry Steele Commager

1.

Henry Steele Commager: Midcentury Liberalism and the History of the Present
by Neil Jumonville. 328 pgs.

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Historian Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998) was one of the leading American intellectuals of the mid-twentieth century. Author or editor of more than forty books, he taught for decades at New York University, Columbia University, and Amherst College and was a pioneer in the field of American studies. But Commager's work was by no means confined to the halls of the university: a popular essayist, lecturer, and political commentator, he earned a reputation as an activist for liberal causes and waged public campaigns against McCarthyism in the 1950s and the Vietnam War in the 1960s. As few have been able to do in the past half-century, Commager united the two worlds of scholarship and public intellectual activity.
Through Commager's life and legacy, Neil Jumonville explores a number of questions central to the intellectual history of postwar America. After considering whether Commager and his associates were really the conservative and conformist group that critics have assumed them to be, Jumonville offers a reevaluation of the liberalism of the period. Finally, he uses Commager's example to ask whether intellectual life is truly compatible with scholarly life.

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Title Page

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

I: Intellectuals and Historians

Chapter 1: The Formation of a Public Intellectual, 1902–1932

Chapter 2: Philosophy Teaching by Experience, 1928–1936

Chapter 3: Columbia and New York in the Forties, 1938–1950

II: Freedom and the American Century

Chapter 4: Protecting Liberalism in World War II, 1939–1947

Chapter 5: Anticommunism and Mccarthyism, 1945–1960

Chapter 6: University, Family, and Race, 1945–1968

Chapter 7: The Call to Political Morality, 1964–1974

III: The Meaning of the American Past

Chapter 8: The Character and Myth of Historians at Midcentury, 1937–P1997

Chapter 9: Liberals and the Historical Past, 1948–1997

Chapter 10: Legacies, 1971–1997

Notes

Index
2.

Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent
by Henry Steele Commager. 172 pgs.

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Preface

Contents

I: The Necessity of Freedom

II: The Necessity of Experimentation

III: Free Enterprise in Ideas

IV: Guilt by Association?

V: Who is Loyal to America?
3.

Theodore Parker
by Henry Steele Commager. 388 pgs.

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Title Page

Preface

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Chapter I: Lexington

Chapter II: Teacher and Student

Chapter III: West Roxbury

Chapter IV: The Unitarian Controversy

Chapter V: Tempest in a Boston Teacup

Chapter VI: The Hub of the Universe

Chapter VII: The Intellectual Gourmand

Chapter VIII: The Universal Reformer

Chapter IX The Socialization Of Christianity

Chapter X: Slavery and the Higher Law

Chapter XI: Fugitive Slaves: Trumpets And Alarums

Chapter XII: The Political Leader

Chapter XIII: I Have Fought the Good Fight, I Have Finished The Course, I Have Kept the Faith

Bibliography

Index
4.

Recasting: Gone with the Wind in American Culture ("The Civil War in Georgia's Red Clay Hills" by Henry Steele Commager begins on p. 11)
by Darden Asbury Pyron. 246 pgs.

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This collection of essays comments on the pre-World War II culture of the United States, when David O. Selznick produced

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Preface

Introduction

One the Critical Setting

The Civil War in Georgia's Red Clay Hills

Going with the Wind

The Case of the Cool Reception

Two Gone with the Wind as Art

"A Striking Resemblance to A Masterpiece": Gone with the Wind in 1936

Helen Deiss Irvin Gea in Georgia: A Mythic Dimension in Gone with the Wind

The Company of Giants

Scarlett O'Hara and the Two Quentin Compsons

"The Bad LIttle Girl of the Good Old Days": Gender, Sex, and the Southern Social Order

Gone with the Wind as History Three

From the Clansman and Birth of A Nation to Gone with the Wind: the Loss of American Innocence

Winds of Change: Gone with the Wind and Racism as A National Issue

Race, Romance, and the Southern LIterary Tradition

The "Simple Story'S" Ideology: Gone with the Wind and the New South Creed

The Inner War of Southern History

Index
5.

Understanding the American Past: American History and Its Interpretation ("American Character" by Henry Steele Commager begins on p. 562)
by Edward N. Saveth. 639 pgs.

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American History and Its Interpretation

Contents

Historical Understanding in Democratic America

I: The American Mold

The Puritan Tradition

The Virginians

The Declaration of Independence

Mercantilism and the American Revolution

Radicals and Conservatives After Independence

The Forces Behind the Constitution

Alexander Hamilton: Nation Maker

Thomas Jefferson: Anti-Totalitarian

The American People in 1800

Ii Sectional Conflict and Civil War

Pre-Civil War Sectionalism

William Leggett and Jacksonian Democracy

The Impact of the Revolutions of 1848 on American Thought

The Reactionary Enlightenment

John Brown

Lincoln and the Governance of Men

Forces in America to the First World War

Henry Villard: Entrepreneur

Karl Marx and Samuel Gompers

Toward a Reorientation of Western History: Continuity and Environment

The Business Attitude Toward the Spanish__American War

The California Progressive

How We Got into World War I

IV: Our Times

Middle Western Isolationism

The Third-Generation American

Roosevelt and His Detractors

The "Sitting Ducks" of Clark Field

Myth Versus Reality in the Far Eastern Policies of the United States

Historical Understanding in Democratic America

Index
6.

The Constitution Reconsidered ("Constitutional History and the Higher Law" by Henry Steele Commager begins on p. 225)
by Conyers Read. 452 pgs.

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Preface

1937 to 1787, Dr.

Contents

Part One the Background of Political, Economic, and Social Ideas Behind the Constitution

The Fundamental Law Behind the Constitution of the United States

The Constitution and the Courts: a Reëxamination of the Famous Case of Dr. Bonham

The Beginnings of Representative Government in England

The Theory of Balanced Government

European Doctrines and the Constitution

Mercantilism : the Old English Pattern of A Controlled Economy

English and French Industrial History After 1540 in Relation to the Constitution

The Concepts of Democracy and LIberty in the Eighteenth Century

The Appeal to Reason and the American Constitution

The Puritan Background of the First Amendment

Philosophical Differences Between the Constitution and the Bill of Rights Herbert W. Schneider

Part Two the Constitution and Its Influence Upon American Thought

Historiography and the Constitution

The Path of Due Process of Law

Minority Rule and the Constitutional Tradition

The Constitution as the American Social Myth

Constitutional History and the Higher Law Henry Steele Commager

Constitutional Democracy: A Nineteenth- Century Faith

Part Three Repercussions of the Constitution Outside the United States

The Constitutional Cult in the Early Nineteenth Century

The Holy Roman Empire Versus the United States: Patterns for Constitution-Making in Central Europe Robert C. Binkley

The Influence of the American Constitution on the Weimar Constitution

American Influence on British Federal Systems

The Judicial Interpretation of the Canadian Constitution

The Frontier and the Constitution in South Africa

Federalism in Latin America

The Origins of Federalism in Mexico

Federalism in Brazil Percy Alvin Martin

Epilogue

Afterthoughts on Constitutions

Index

Index
7.

Howells: A Century of Criticism ("For Fifty Years a Literary Dynamo: A Review of Howells by Van Wyck Brooks" by Henry Steele Commager begins on p. 231)
by Kenneth E. Eble. 260 pgs.

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Title Page

Preface

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Howells as a Literary Man 1860-1920

Part II: Critical Studies Since 1920

I. the Howells Revival

Howells: Ten Years After

Howells and the Controversy Over Realism in American Fiction

The Usableness of Howells

The Neuroticism Of William Dean Howells

Ii. Realism and Reticence

William Dean Howells, Ed Howe, And the Story of a Country Town

A Note on Howells And "The Smiling Aspects of Life"

The Palpitating Divan

Howells' Kisses

Iii. Howells' Social and Economic Views

William Dean Howells And the Economic Novel

Howells' Doctrine of Complicity

Howells's Opinions on the Religious Conflicts Of His Age as Exhibited in Magazine Articles

Iv. Current Opinion

For Fifty Years a Literar Dynamo: A Review of Howells by Van Wyck Brooks

The Dean's Comeback: Four Decades Of Howells Scholarship

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