The historian and the public realm -- The historian as political advisor -- The historian and the cycles of history -- The lessons of an historian -- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.: Tory democrat -- The age of Jackson and its impact -- Jacksonian abolitionist: the conversion of William Leggett -- Race, sex, and the dimensions of liberty in antebellum America -- The two world wars and the idea of the state -- Women, politics, philanthropy: some historical origins of the welfare state -- The new left, the new right, and the New Deal -- "Malaise" Revisited: Jimmy Carter and the crisis of confidence -- Historical analogies and public policy: the black and immigrant experience in urban America -- Woodrow Wilson and the cold war -- America after the cold war: global order, democracy, and domestic consent -- Christopher Lasch's quarrel with liberalism -- Black studies as academic discipline and political struggle -- William James and the strenuous responsibility of the liberal intellectual -- Henry steele commager's activist history -- Edmund Wilson at Oxford.

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