Schlesinger jr thesis

History, it seems, is not only in the facts, but also in the genes. Or so Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., laughingly conceded recently. “I grew up in a household that was saturated with history. Not only my father, but also my mother was a historian.

Schlesinger was a lifelong diarist, and his journals helped him compose a memoir, A Life in the Twentieth Century (2000), the first of a planned but uncompleted two volumes. (An edited version of his diaries is scheduled for publication in fall 2007.)

John Kenneth Galbraith, whom he had met in Washington, also joined the Harvard faculty shortly after the war, became Schlesinger's neighbor in Cambridge, and remained his lifelong friend—and his companion in combining an academic career with an active and unceasing engagement with politics (something Schlesinger shared with his own father as well).

In his most recent book, The Disuniting of America, Schlesinger argues that Americans must focus on what brings them together. He warns against the “cult of ethnicity,” which has the potential to tear the nation apart, much as it has in other troubled regions of the world.