Overview

When Daniel Patrick Moynihan died in 2003 the Economist described him as a philosopher-politician-diplomat who two centuries earlier would not have been out of place among the Founding Fathers. Though Moynihan never wrote an autobiography, he was a gifted author and voluminous correspondent, and in this selection from his letters Steven Weisman has compiled a vivid portrait of Moynihans life, in the senators own words. Before his four terms as Senator from New York, Moynihan served in key positions under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. His letters offer an extraordinary window into particular moments in history, from his feelings of loss at JFKs assassination, to his passionate pleas to Nixon not to make Vietnam a Nixon war, to his frustrations over healthcare and welfare reform during the Clinton era. This book showcases the unbridled range of Moynihans intellect and interests, his appreciation for his constituents, his renowned wit, and his warmth even for those with whom he profoundly disagreed. Its publication is a significant literary event.

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9781586488017

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<p> The Economist, September 18, 2010<br> There can be no better bedside collection for anyone who is interested in the history of America and the world in the second half of the 20th century--or in a life lived bravely. <p> Chronicle of Higher Education, September 30, 2010<br> Unfortunately, Moynihan never wrote [a memoir]. The closest thing we have is his voluminous correspondence, collected for the first time in Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker <br> ' Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary ' (PublicAffairs; $35) will probably be read more widely and for longer, and certainly with greater pleasure, than any of the others on the Moynihan shelf... The Moynihan papers are the largest one-man collection in the Library of Congress--ten thousand pages, enough to lay a paper trail from the White House to the Capitol. From this mother lode of foolscap, the journalist Steven R. Weisman has sculpted a work of coherence and energy... [The] tensions and crosscuttings make for a stimulating book, just as they made for an adventurous mind and an eventful life. <br>David Brooks, New York Times Book Review His letters recorded the evolving intellectual adventure of a restless mind. Moynihan explored the grand themes of history and tried to understand the times in the most ambitious of ways: the cultural implications of the shift from the industrial to the post-industrial society, the disaffection of the intellectual class, the foreign policy implications of ethnic tension in the post-communist world... The letters make for absorbing reading because Moynihan's grand ideas were always driven by his own internal tensions. It was as if he were writing an intensely personal memoir but was phrasing his discoveries in the language of Samuel Huntington.... This whole collection has been put together with superb care. While writing this review, I've been cursing Weisman's introduction for its mastery in highlighting all t

Author Information

Steven R. Weisman is editorial director and public policy fellow at the Peterson Institute in Washington, DC; before that he was the chief international economics correspondent of the New York Times. He also served at the Times as a member of the editorial board, specializing in politics and economics (1995--2002) and as deputy foreign editor. He is the author of The Great Tax Wars: Lincoln to Wilson--The Fierce Battles over Money and Power That Transformed the Nation, which received the Sidney Hillman Award in 2003 for the book that most advances the cause of social justice.

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