A Definitive Biography of Henry George

Abstract

THE PUBLICATION OF THIS LONG-AWAITED WORK1 has provided Henry George with the biography he has sorely needed. Indeed, it is a peculiar commentary on the decline of American liberalism that one of its dominant figures has had to wait fifty-eight years from the time of his death to receive the full attention of a trained biographer, at least one not in the family circle. Professor Barker's book is authoritative, scholarly, sympathetic, and complete. It is not a literary biography in the grand style, like the recent Packe life of John Stuart Mill, for an example; it is rather an historian's biography-which is not a synonym for dullness, although the book does contain some (almost necessary) dull sections. The attitude throughout is objective without being patronizing, and appreciative without being eulogistic. In short, the attitude is the proper one. If there is anything missing from the book, it is a clear-cut picture of George's personality, but in the case of a public figure and a reformer, that is always difficult to capture, and, for various reasons, particularly so in this case. But, at the outset, let us say that this undoubtedly will be the definitive life of Henry George.