Schlesinger, Arthur Meier

Related Category: Historians, U.S.: Biographies

(shlĕs´ĭnjər), 1888–1965, American historian, b. Xenia, Ohio. After teaching at Ohio State Univ. and the State Univ. of Iowa, he was a professor of history (1924–54) at Harvard and in 1928 became an editor of the New England Quarterly. His well-known works in the field of colonial history include The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (1918) and Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain, 1764–1776 (1958). He is also known for his interest in the interpretation of social history, as in The Rise of the City, 1878–1898 (1933) and Political and Social Growth of the American People, 1865–1940 (1941). His other books include New Viewpoints in American History (1922), essays on American historiography. With Dixon Ryan Fox he edited the “History of American Life” series (13 vol., 1927–48), which remains a valuable examination of U.S. social and cultural life.