The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
How liberalism and one of the most dramatic eras in American history were shaped by an influential university president and his powerful circle of friends
Yale's Kingman Brewster was the first and only university president to appear on the covers of Time and Newsweek, and the last of the great campus leaders to become an esteemed national figure. He was also the center of the liberal establishment—a circle of influential men who fought to keep the United States true to ideals and extend the full range of American opportunities to all citizens of every class and color. Using Brewster as his focal point, Geoffrey Kabaservice shows how he and his lifelong friends—Kennedy adviser McGeorge Bundy, Attorney General and statesman Elliot Richardson, New York mayor John Lindsay, Bishop Paul Moore, and Cyrus Vance, pillar of Washington and Wall Street—helped usher this country through the turbulence of the 1960s, creating a legacy that still survives.
In a narrative that is as engaging and lively as it is meticulously researched, The Guardians judiciously and convincingly reclaims the importance of Brewster and his generation, illuminating their vital place in American history as the bridge between the old establishment and modern liberalism.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As president of Yale in the 1960s, Kingman Brewster was able to avoid much of the violence that afflicted other campuses rocked by student protests. It was probably no coincidence that, three decades earlier, he was a prominent student protestor against the U.S. entering WWII. By the '60s, he was part of a loose-knit group of liberal patricians that included presidential advisers McGeorge Bundy and Cyrus Vance, New York City mayor John Lindsay and Episcopalian bishop Paul Moore. In his first book, Kabaservice (who has a B.A. and a Ph.D. from Yale) deftly traces the professional and personal connections linking these men who were born to privilege but had a "genuine wish to be of service to the nation," and reveals how they tried to invest government and academic power structures with the flexibility needed to cope with the social upheavals of Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement. Not only President Bush but John Kerry and Howard Dean attended Brewster's Yale, and Kabaservice's history offers valuable insights into a crucible that help shape their political character not just through Brewster's actions, but through the powerful backlash from conservative alumni. The presentation is meticulous, and the considerable detail about the overhaul of Yale's undergraduate admissions process is crucial to understanding just how completely those changes reshaped the school's student body by admitting not only more diverse but also smarter students. The story is further enlivened by frequent off-campus forays that reveal not only how the '60s affected Yale but how Yale affected the '60s.