March 5, 1999

'Henry Steele Commager: Midcentury Liberalism and the History of the Present'

By NINA C. AYOUB

"To argue the benefits of moderation rarely brings honor or fame to an intellectual," says Neil Jumonville. Yet that is what Henry Steele Commager did, in a most immoderate era.

Unlike many of his liberal colleagues, the American historian did not enter the McCarthy period bearing a disillusioned leftist past. He had never been a leftist. He was a Jeffersonian, he said, and

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