Muckraker’s Progress

Lincoln Steffens: A Biography By Justin Kaplan Simon & Schuster, 380 pp., $10 If the campus rebels of a few years ago had taken the trouble to study the history of twentieth century American thought, they probably would have recognized their spiritual father in the subject of this book. He was, after all, advocating student power at Harvard in 1915 and proclaiming his faith in the lofty intentions of Lenin and Stalin long before the recent student flirtations with Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh.

But of course the student movement of the 1960s wasn’t based, to any significant extent, on a reading of twentieth century American history, or of anything else for that matter. And that helps explain the movement’s failure to recognize its ideological debt to Lincoln Steffens, a leader of the radical movement back in the days when the radical movement was to be taken seriously.

RM

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Robert W. Merry

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Lincoln Steffens: A Biography By Justin Kaplan Simon & Schuster, 380 pp., $10 If the campus rebels of a few years ago had taken the trouble to study the history of twentieth century American thought, they probably would have recognized their spiritual father in the subject of this book. He was, after all, advocating student power at Harvard in 1915 and proclaiming his faith in the lofty intentions of Lenin and Stalin long before the recent student flirtations with Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh.

But of course the student movement of the 1960s wasn’t based, to any significant extent, on a reading of twentieth century American history, or of anything else for that matter. And that helps explain the movement’s failure to recognize its ideological debt to Lincoln Steffens, a leader of the radical movement back in the days when the radical movement was to be taken seriously.