Alan Brinkley

Alan Brinkley (June 2, 1949 – June 16, 2019)[1][2] was an American political historian who taught for over 20 years at Columbia University. He was the Allan Nevins Professor of History until his death. From 2003 to 2009, he was University Provost.[3]

Alan Brinkley
Born(1949-06-02)June 2, 1949
Washington, D.C., U.S.
DiedJune 16, 2019(2019-06-16) (aged 70)
New York City, U.S.
OccupationPolitical historian
Known for
  • Voices of Protest:
  • American History: A Survey
  • The Unfinished Nation
Academic background
Alma materPrinceton University (A.B. '71)
Harvard University (Ph.D. '79)
Academic work
DisciplineAmerican history
Sub-disciplineGreat Depression and World War II
InstitutionsColumbia University

Early life

Brinkley was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Ann (Fischer) and David Brinkley, a long-time television newscaster at NBC and ABC. Alan was a brother of Joel Brinkley. Brinkley graduated with an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1971 after completing a 218-page long senior thesis titled "The Gospel of Discontent: Huey Long in National Politics 1932-1935."[4] He later received his Ph.D. in history from Harvard University in 1979 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "The Long and Coughlin movements: dissident voices in the Great Depression."[5]

Career

Brinkley's scholarship has focused mainly on the period of the Great Depression and World War II. Among his books are Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (1983),[6][lower-alpha 1] which won the National Book Award; The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (1995); Liberalism and its Discontents (1998); and The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century (2010), which won the Ambassador Book Prize and the Sperber Prize, as well as being a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is the author of two short biographies: Franklin D. Roosevelt (2009) and John F. Kennedy (2012).

His essay "The Problem of American Conservatism" was published in the American Historical Review in 1994.

He was one of three American historians to have been both Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford (1998-1999) and Pitt Professor of American History at Cambridge (2011-2012). He was an honorary fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. He received the Jerome Levenson Teaching Prize in 1982 at Harvard University, where Brinkley taught for seven years; and the Great Teacher Award at Columbia in 2003.

He was the chair of the board of the Century Foundation in New York, and he was the chairman of the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. He was also a trustee of Oxford University Press from 2009 to 2012, and a trustee of the Dalton School.

In 2018, Columbia University Press published Alan Brinkley: A Life in History, edited by David Greenberg, Moshik Temkin, and Mason B. Williams. The book includes essays about Brinkley's scholarship and career by many of his doctoral advisees as well as personal essays by friends and colleagues of his including A. Scott Berg, Frank Rich, and Nicholas Lemann.

Textbooks

Brinkley was the senior author of two best-selling, frequently updated American history textbooks, American History: A Survey and The Unfinished Nation. They are widely used in universities and in AP United States History high school classes. He also wrote the commonly used AP US History textbook American History: Connecting With The Past.

Brinkley took over sole responsibility for the ninth edition of the American History: A Survey textbook from historians Richard N. Current, Frank Freidel, and T. Harry Williams. He had joined the team to help with the 1979 revisions.

Historian Emil Pocock, evaluating the ninth edition of 1995, said it is:

Typical of the mass market textbook....Brinkley offers a traditional narrative of American history. Built around a core of political and economic events, this attractive colored text contains a good selection of illustrations, maps, charts, and other graphics, as well as other features designed to make it stand out among the competition....This latest edition has integrated additional material on immigrants, Native Americans, African-Americans, and women into the political narrative.[7]

Personal details

He lived in New York with his wife, Evangeline Morphos, and his daughter, Elly.

He died from complications of frontotemporal dementia.[8]

Works
  • America in the Twentieth Century (1960), co-authored with Frank Freidel; 5th ed. published in 1982 – used in college 20th century U.S. history classes.[9]
  • American History: A Survey, originally by Richard N. Current, T. Harry Williams, and Frank Freidel (1961), by Brinkley in recent editions, reaching the 11th ed. in 1995, 13th ed. in 2009, and 15th ed. in 2015 — used especially for AP U.S. History and International Baccalaureate History courses.[10]
  • 1982 Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression — winner of the National Book Award[6][lower-alpha 1][11]
  • 1992 The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People (2 vols.). Later eds. are co-written by Harvey H. Jackson and Bradley Robert Rice.[12][13]
  • 1995 The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War[14]
  • 1997 New Federalist Papers: Essays in Defense of the Constitution with Nelson W. Polsby and Kathleen M. Sullivan
  • 1998 Liberalism and Its Discontents[15]
  • 1999 Culture and Politics in the Great Depression[16]
  • 2009 Franklin Delano Roosevelt[17]
  • 2010 The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century[18]
  • 2012 John F. Kennedy: The American Presidents Series: The 35th President, 1961-1963[19]

Awards

Notes
  1. This was the 1980 award for hardcover History.
    From 1980 to 1983 in National Book Award history there were dual hardcover and paperback awards in most categories, and several nonfiction subcategories including General Nonfiction. Most of the paperback award-winners were reprints, including the 1983 History.

References
  1. Alan Brinkley, Leading Historian of 20th-Century America, Dies at 70
  2. ABC News
  3. See "Provost Brinkley Will Return To Teaching, Research" November/December 2008
  4. Brinkley, Alan David. Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (ed.). "The Gospel of Discontent: Huey Long in National Politics 1932-1935". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  5. hollis.harvard.edu https://hollis.harvard.edu/primo-explore/fulldisplay?context=L&vid=HVD2&search_scope=everything&tab=everything&lang=en_US&docid=01HVD_ALMA211895661060003941. Retrieved 2020-05-31. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  6. "National Book Awards – 1983". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-04-13.
  7. Peter J. Parish, ed. Reader's Guide to American History (1997) pp 692-93.
  8. Seelye, Katharine Q. (2019-06-17). "Alan Brinkley, Leading Historian of 20th-Century America, Dies at 70". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-06-17.
  9. Freidel, Frank Burt; Brinkley, Alan (Jun 17, 1982). America in the Twentieth Century. Knopf. Retrieved Jun 17, 2019 – via Internet Archive.
  10. Brinkley, Alan (Jun 17, 1995). American History: A Survey. McGraw-Hill. Retrieved Jun 17, 2019 – via Internet Archive.
  11. Brinkley, Alan (Jun 17, 1982). "Voices of protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression". Knopf. Retrieved Jun 17, 2019 – via Google Books.
  12. Brinkley, Alan (Jun 17, 1997). "The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People". A.A. Knopf. Retrieved Jun 17, 2019 – via Google Books.
  13. "The Unfinished Nation: From 1865". Retrieved Jun 17, 2019 – via books.google.com.
  14. Brinkley, Alan (Jun 17, 1995). The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War. Alfred A. Knopf. Retrieved Jun 17, 2019 – via Internet Archive.
  15. Brinkley, Alan (Jun 17, 1998). "Liberalism and Its Discontents". Harvard University Press. Retrieved Jun 17, 2019 – via Google Books.
  16. Brinkley, Alan (Jun 17, 1999). "Culture and Politics in the Great Depression". Markham Press Fund. Retrieved Jun 17, 2019 – via Google Books.
  17. Brinkley, Alan (Jun 17, 2010). "Franklin Delano Roosevelt". Oxford University Press. Retrieved Jun 17, 2019 – via Google Books.
  18. Brinkley, Alan (Jun 17, 2010). "The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century". Alfred A. Knopf. Retrieved Jun 17, 2019 – via Google Books.
  19. Brinkley, Alan (Jun 17, 2012). John F. Kennedy. Thorndike Press. Retrieved Jun 17, 2019 – via Internet Archive.
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