Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917–2007)

I really enjoyed reading the transcripts of these conversations and I'm so glad the interviews were unedited. Started to listen to the CDs but it was faster to read. It was a walk through a time capsule. I had to keep reminding myself that she was only 34 years old and her husband had been killed just four months earlier. She was remarkably composed. I found it so interesting to hear her views on JFK and the political scene and characters of the 1960s and the footnotes were wonderful in clarifying the people and situations she was referring to. It was funny in a shocking way to hear her views on male/female relationships and feminism. Mostly I loved the history both the good and the bad .... one item that jumped out was Ike's appointment (Lyman Lemnitzer) as Chairman of Joint Chiefs who approved a classified plan for the US government to commit acts of terrorism against Miami and other US cities and blame those acts on Castro. Thankfully JFK rejected it. JFK said he thought it a disgrace that there were less than 100 people in Washington working on disarmament ... and he was upset there was no proper award for civilian achievement while there were many for military achievements so he created the Medal of Freedom. Also interesting, he had no chief of staff so ideas didn't get filtered and each cabinet head had access to him. Lots of good stuff and makes me wonder how the world might have been different had he finished his term. Depressing to compare it all to political "leaders" of today.… (more)

5790. The Cycles of American History, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (read 17 May 2022) This book, published in 1986, is the 13th book by its author I have read. It expatiates a lot about the political scene as of 1986 and hence is often not pertinent to the very different political scene as it exists today. And one knows that what the author would say about today's political scene would be darker than what he had to say about the 1986 scene. The book says lots of wise things but some I could not agree with. For instance, he spends a lot of time bemoaning the fact that the 25th Amendment permits a person, such as Jerry Ford to be president even though he was never voted on by all the nation's voters. I cannot think that is a pertinent complaint. I think the 25th Amendment worked OK in 1974 and see no need to change it. All in all the book said wisely much but it seemed far removed from the situation which confronts us today--a perilous one in my view, with so many people eager to do violence to our system of government… (more)

Being cynical about politicians is only natural, yet sometimes someone comes along who somehow taps into our natural craving for leadership, seemingly embodying the best of our national spirit and promising a better tomorrow via their charismatic presence alone. RFK is to many people the last politician they could trust emotionally, a man of infinite compassion yet ruthless integrity, a person of infinite compassion yet ruthless integrity, someone with a prosecutor's ferocity yet a poet's sensibility. He was murdered before he could really do much to validate the immense, almost messianic hopes that people laid on him, and this biography, written by a man who knew him well, takes you through his journey from hard-edged enforcer of justice to champion of the downtrodden in a way that will leave you greatly saddened at the cruelties of history.… (more)

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this book are historical. No identification with extant persons, places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Page 25: opposition to the abolition of child labor, minimum-wage and maximum-hour laws, and social insurance is framed by businessmen as a defense of the “freedom” of workers to make a living however they please.

Page 57: President Coolidge says “The chief business of the American people is business….If the Federal Government should go out of existence, the common run of people would not detect the difference in the affairs of their daily life for a considerable length of time.”

Page 66: “Denied outlet in lower prices because of accumulating rigidities, the gains of technological efficiency were equally denied outlet in higher wages or in higher farm prices because of the bargaining feebleness of the labor movement and of the farm bloc. As a result, these gains were captured increasingly by the businessmen themselves in the form of profits. Through the [1920s], profits rose over 80 per cent as a whole, or twice as much as productivity; the profits of financial institutions rose a fantastic 150 per cent.”

Page 67: “Between 1923 and 1929, output per man-hour in manufacturing rose almost 32 per cent, while hourly wages rose but slightly over 8 per cent.

Page 67: “By the middle twenties, the whole economic process began to focus on a single point—the ticker-tape machine with its endless chatter of stock market quotations….The leaders of the business community, now heedless of caution in their passion for gain, promoted new investment trusts, devised new holding companies and manipulated new pools, always with the aim of floating new securities for the apparently insatiable market….In time it would appear that even the leaders of business could not decipher the intricate financial structures they were erecting.”

Pages 103-104: In a 1925 letter, FDR advises fellow his fellow Democrats that the party must become “by definite policy, the Party of constructive progress, before we can attract a larger following.” Since 1920, he says, “we have been doing nothing—waiting for the other fellow to put his foot in it.” “In the minds of the average voter the Democratic Party has no definite constructive aims.”


Page 114: “The A.F. of L. played little role in initiating [efforts to abolish the yellow-dog contract and limit the labor injunction], preferring rather to place its trust in the foremost industrial statesmen of modern times. Yet, underneath, new currents were stirring. Toward the end of the twenties, a series of strikes, especially in the needle trades and in the textile mills, showed a defiance not yet smothered by the boom.”

Page 150: “Never before in American history had artists and writers felt so impotent in their relation to American society. The business culture wanted nothing from the intellectual, had no use for him, gave him no sustenance.”

Page 165: On March 7, 1930, Hoover says “All the evidences indicate that the worst effects of the crash on unemployment will have been passed in the next sixty days. “[President Hoover’s] fault lay not in taking an optimistic line, but in bending the facts to sustain his optimism, and then in believing his own conclusions.” “Hoover found in pledges an acceptable substitute for actions; assurances given took the place of dollars spent.”

Page 177: In 1930, businessmen predict that “by early spring there should be definite signs of a turn….1930 will stand out as a year of unusual stability….Renewed business expansion may be anticipated during the second half….The last half should be marked by rapid recovery in every direction.”

Page 207: “[Socialist party leader Norman Thomas’s] most successful appeal was not to workers but to middle-class audiences in the colleges and the churches. Between 1928 and 1932, the Socialist party hardly more than doubled its tiny membership—from about 7,000 to 15,000.”


Page 226: Oklahoma Senator Gore, in 1931, says “You might just as well try to prevent the human race from having a disease as to prevent economic grief of this sort.”

Page 244: “[President Hoover’s] attitude in press conferences aroused more serious concern. He played favorites…and complained to publishers of reporters whose stories he did not like. Gradually he began to cancel his press conferences….The conferences themselves consisted increasingly of official handouts. Bumbling attempts by White House secretaries to withhold official news and to control the writing of stories only aggravated the situation. The president’s relations with the press…had reached ‘a stage of unpleasantness without parallel during the present century. They are characterized by mutual dislike, unconcealed suspicion, and downright bitterness.’”

Page 253: “J.P. Morgan, who appealed to workers to give their meager wages for the block-aid campaign (‘we must all do our bit’), paid not one cent of federal income tax himself in 1930, 1931, or 1932; nor, in the latter two years, did any of his partners….According to their tax returns, the Morgan partners, for all their accumulation of town houses and limousines, yachts in Long Island Sound and shooting boxes in Scotland, had virtually no taxable income at all in the depression years.”

Page 268: Pennsylvania Senator David A. Reed says “I do not often envy other countries their governments, but I say that if this country ever needed a Mussolini, it needs one now.”

Page 286: Democratic presidential candidate John Nance Garner’s “motto would be ‘America First’.”

Page 419: Felix Frankfurter favors “rigorous regulation of investment banking and securities exchanges.” Rex Tugwell and others preferred central planning.

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