Arthur Schlesinger
Former presidential adviser
Arthur Schlesinger, the son of the historian, Arthur Meier Schlesinger, was born in Columbus, Ohio, on Oct. 15, 1917. He graduated from Harvard University in 1938 and became a member of the University's Society of Fellows from 1939 to 1942.
After the United States entered the Second World War Schlesinger served with the Office of War Information (1942-43) and the Office of Strategic Services (1943-45). In 1946 he became a teacher of history at Harvard University. A strong supporter of the Democratic Party he was the co-founder of Americans for Democratic Action and worked in for the election of Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956. After the election of John F. Kennedy he was appointed special assistant to the President for Latin American affairs.
Following the assassination of Kennedy he became the Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities of the City University of New York, and was appointed chairman of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Four Freedoms Foundation.
Schlesinger is the author of several books including The Age of Jackson (1945), which won a Pulitzer Prize for history; the multi-volume The Age of Roosevelt (1957-1960), A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (1965), a book about the administration of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy & His Times (1979), Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain, 1764-1776 (1980), The Cycles of American History (1986), General MacArthur and President Truman: The Struggle for Control of American Foreign Policy (1992), The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (1993), Almanac of American History (1995), A Life in the 20th Century (2001), Imperial Presidency (2004) and War and the American Presidency (2005).