Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (1917-2007), known today as the architect of John F. Kennedy's presidential legacy, blazed an extraordinary path from Harvard University to wartime London to the West Wing. The son of a pioneering historian--and a two-time Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner in his own right--Schlesinger redefined the art of presidential biography. A Thousand Days, his best-selling and immensely influential record of the Kennedy administration, cemented Schlesinger's place as one of the nation's greatest political image makers and a key figure of the American intellectual elite--a peer and contemporary of Reinhold Niebuhr, Isaiah Berlin, and Adlai Stevenson.

The first major biography of this defining figure in Kennedy's Camelot, Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian presents a dramatic life and career set against the backdrop of the American Century. Biographer Richard Aldous draws on oral history, rarely seen archival documents, and the official Schlesinger papers to craft a portrait of the incandescently brilliant and controversial historian who framed America's ascent to global empire.