DAVID S. BROWN. Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2006. Pp. xxiii, 291. $27.50

Abstract

Professional historians will find this book engaging, illuminating, and at times frustrating. David S. Brown carefully examines Richard Hofstadter's personal life, skillfully locates him in his changing cultural and political contexts, and provides fair-minded critical analysis of his brilliant and influential work. Given that Hofstadter's writings ranged over American history from 1750 to 1970 and challenged many prevailing interpretations, accurately characterizing and gauging the lasting significance of his contributions is no mean feat. Although specialists inevitably will quarrel with some of Brown's judgments, his wide-ranging research and judicious assessments make his study a solid guide to one of the twentieth century's most important historians. Hofstadter (1916–1970) was born and raised in Buffalo, son of a Polish-born Jewish father and a mother of German Protestant descent. He was christened in her Lutheran faith, sang in the church choir, and gravitated toward Judaism only after his mother's death in 1926. In his own words, Hofstadter “spent a lot of years acquiring a Jewish identity, which is more cultural than religious” (p. 53). That identity remained murky to many in the American historical profession and even at Columbia University, where he earned his Ph.D. and taught for almost his entire career. Hofstadter grew to be at home in New York and refused numerous offers from other universities. Yet he remained suspicious of the city's cosmopolitan parochialism—of all American parochialisms among the most constricting because among the least self-conscious—and gently recommended trips west of the Hudson to those who railed against southern and western hayseeds. Many of his richest insights as a historian derived from his status as an outsider surprised to find, as the categories changed beneath his feet, that he had become an insider. He worked hard to achieve the intellectual independence that became his hallmark; his taste for irony came naturally.