Voices of America

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. is one of many fascinating personalities revealed in his wide-ranging Journals

October 07, 2007|Martin F. Nolan

Journals: 1952-2000
By Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
Edited by Andrew Schlesinger and Stephen Schlesinger
Penguin, 894 pp., $40

On Dec. 29, 1952, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. paid a farewell call to a "cheerful, scrubbed and natty" Harry S. Truman. The president was "in a generally philosophic mood about the beating he had been taking from the press and about his confidence that history would vindicate him," Schlesinger wrote, adding, "I noticed that he still speaks of FDR as 'the President.' "

Throughout these diary entries, Schlesinger also treats Franklin D. Roosevelt as "the President." He reproaches himself for failing to finish his "Age of Roosevelt" project after three volumes, leaving FDR in 1936. But Schlesinger's life since 1952 has been a New Deal manifesto of its own. His teaching, lecturing, and writing (a dozen non-Roosevelt books) served the muse of history. His pursuit of liberal argument provided intellectual sustenance for a dozen would-be successors to FDR. The Democratic Party consumed his time. So did his "hyperactive social life," about which he regrets not a canap&#xE9;. In 1952, in Chicago, he accepts a ride from Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. In 1983, at a "typically New York round" of socializing, he exits a party "around 11 and made [my] way to the West Side for a party at Mick Jagger's."

These "Journals," edited by his sons Andrew and Stephen, form a Herculean, indeed Rooseveltian, task. He has bequeathed historic insights and anecdotes, the bricks and mortar of a giant Works Progress Administration project. Schlesinger's sometimes stirring, occasionally sad, and often sardonic jottings form a labor-intensive public works project for his fellow historians and biographers. They must now revise and extend the biographies of 10 presidents, plus sundry other pols, literary lights, and the dramatis personae of People magazine. For those who wish to understand the politics of those five decades, "Journals" is essential.

Academic works, with footnotes and citations, plow oft-tilled soil. Since they seldom feature high-octane, off-the-record revelations, readers rarely say, "I never knew that before." They will likely murmur "wow!" at every page of "Journals." The Kennedy Library might start a new wing. JFK, who calls Dwight Eisenhower "cold," also says, "I made a mistake in putting Bobby in the Justice Department," wishing he had sent his brother to run the CIA.