Allan Nevins
Allan Nevins | |
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University of Illinois (MA) | |
Spouse | Mary Fleming Richardson |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | Columbia University |
Doctoral students |
Joseph Allan Nevins[1] (May 20, 1890 – March 5, 1971) was an American historian and journalist, known for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and his biographies of such figures as Grover Cleveland, Hamilton Fish, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller, as well as his public service. He was a leading exponent of business history and oral history.
Biography
Nevins was born in
He married Mary Fleming (Richardson) in 1916, and the couple had two daughters, Anne Elizabeth and Meredith.
Career
Nevins wrote his first book, The Life of
Nevins then accepted positions with the
In 1924 Nevins resigned from the Post to become
As a journalist, Nevins covered the campaigns of
In 1928, Nevins joined the history faculty of
During
Upon returning to Columbia, Nevins began working on a multi-volume series on the American Civil War. The first volume The Ordeal of Union (1947) won the Bancroft Prize and a $10,000 Scribners Literary Prize. In 1948 Nevins created the first oral history program to operate on an institutionalized basis in the U.S., which continues as Columbia University's Center for Oral History. In addition to publishing four more volumes of the Civil War series, Nevins reworked the Rockefeller biography to cast a more favorable light upon the magnate. In 1954 with Frank Hill, Nevins published the first of a three-volume biography of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company, Ford: The Times, the Man, and the Company.
From May 6, 1938, until August 18, 1957, Nevins hosted a 15-minute radio show Adventures in Science, which covered a wide variety of medical and scientific topics, and was broadcast as a segment of CBS' Adult Education Series various days, usually in the late afternoon.
After retiring from Columbia, Nevins relocated to California, where he worked as senior researcher at the Huntington Library in San Marino, and also returned to Oxford from 1964 to 1965. Nevins also publicly supported John F. Kennedy in the 1960 Presidential Campaign and wrote an introduction for Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. Nevins headed the national Civil War Centennial Commission, edited its 15-volume Impact series and finished the final volumes of his eight-volume series on the American Civil War. He also published Herbert H. Lehman and His Era (1963) and James Truslow Adams: Historian of the American Dream (1968).
In 1966, Nevins received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.[9]
As an historian, Nevins supervised more than 100 doctoral
Death and legacy
Nevins died in Menlo Park, California, in 1971. He was buried at Kensico Cemetery in Westchester County, New York. The last two volumes of his Civil War series won the U.S. National Book Award in History in 1972. Historians including Ray Allen Billington compiled Allan Nevins on History (1975) to celebrate his accomplishments. His granddaughter Jane Mayer also became a journalist and author. The Society of American Historians awards an Allan Nevins Prize annually in his honor.
Published work
Nevins wrote more than 50 books, mainly political and business history and biography focusing on the nineteenth century, in addition to his many newspaper and academic articles. The hallmarks of his books were his extensive, in-depth research and a vigorous, almost journalistic writing style. Subjects of his biographies included:
Ordeal of the Union
Nevins' greatest work was Ordeal of the Union (1947–1971), an 8-volume comprehensive history of the coming of the Civil war, and the war itself. (He died before he could address Reconstruction, and thus his masterwork ends in 1865.) It remains the most detailed political, economic and military narrative of the era. Nevins's Ordeal of the Union has a slight but perceptible pro-Union bias, just as Shelby Foote's three-volume masterwork has a slight but perceptible bias towards the Confederacy.[10] The last two volumes jointly won the 1972 U.S. National Book Award in History.[11]
Nevins also planned and helped to edit a pioneering 13-volume series exploring American social history, "A History of American Life".
His biographer explained Nevins' style:
Nevins used narrative not only to tell a story but to propound moral lessons. It was not his inclination to deal in intellectual concepts or theories, like many academic scholars. He preferred emphasizing practical notions about the importance of national unity, principled leadership, [classical] liberal politics, enlightened journalism, the social responsibility of business and industry, and scientific and technical progress that added to the cultural improvement of humanity.[12]
John D. Rockefeller
Nevins wrote several books on John D. Rockefeller and the Rockefeller family, including a two-volume authorized biography of John D. Rockefeller. Business journalist Ferdinand Lundberg later criticized Nevins for deferring to power and thereby misleading readers.[13] By contrast, historian Priscilla Roberts argues that his studies of inventors and businessmen brought about a reassessment of American industrialization and its leaders. She writes:
- Nevins argued that economic development in the United States caused relatively little human suffering, while raising the general standard of living and making the United States the great industrial power capable of defeating Germany in both world wars. The great capitalists of that period should, he argued, be viewed, not as "robber barons", but as men whose economic self-interest had played an essentially, positive role in American history, and who had done nothing criminal by the standards of their time.[14]
In contending that Rockefeller did "nothing criminal", in light of his central role in the Ludlow Massacre, Nevins seems to have equated non-prosecution with innocence.[15]
Historians and biographers who followed Nevins' lead include
. Though these later biographers did not confer heroic status on their subjects, they used historical and biographical investigations to establish a more complex understanding of the American past, and the history of American economic development in particular.John F. Kennedy
An enthusiastic supporter of then-Senator John F. Kennedy,[citation needed] Nevins wrote the foreword to the inaugural edition of Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. He also joined his friend, frequent co-editor, and Columbia colleague Henry Steele Commager in organizing "Professors for Kennedy", a political advocacy group in the 1960 presidential election. In the late 1960s Nevins and Commager parted ways over the issue of the Vietnam War, a war that Commager opposed on constitutional grounds, while Nevins thought it necessary in the Cold War against Communism.
Major books
Many of the titles are available free online here
- The Evening Post; a Century of Journalism (1922), history of the NYC newspaper online
- The American States During and After the Revolution, 1775–1789 (1927) online editiononline free
- A History of American Life vol. VIII: The Emergence of Modern America 1865–1878 (1927)
- Frémont, the West's Greatest Adventurer; being a biography from certain hitherto unpublished sources of General John C. Frémont, together with his wife, Jessie Benton Frémont, and some account of the period of expansion which found a brilliant leader in the Pathfinder (1928) online edition*
- Polk: The Diary of President, 1845–1849, covering the Mexican war, the acquisition of Oregon, and the conquest of California and the Southwest (1929)
- Henry White: Thirty Years of American Diplomacy (1930)
- Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage (1932). Won the 1933 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.[16]
- Letters of Grover Cleveland, 1850–1908 (1933)
- Dictionary of American Biography (1934–1936); Nevins wrote 40 articles on Alexander Hamilton, Rutherford B. Hayes, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, etc.
- Abram Hewitt: With Some Account of Peter Cooper (1935)
- Hamilton Fish; The Inner History of the Grant Administration (1936) online edition vol 1 online edition vol 2
- The Gateway to History 1938. online edition
- John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons (1940)
- The Emergence of Modern America, 1865–1878 (1941)
- Ordeal of the Union (1947–1971) online here
- Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847–1852 (1947);
- A House Dividing, 1852–1857 (1947);
- Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 1857–1859 (1950);
- Prologue to Civil War, 1859–1861 (1950);
- The Improvised War, 1861–1862 (1959);
- War Becomes Revolution, 1862–1863 (1960);
- The Organized War, 1863–1864 (1960);
- The Organized War to Victory, 1864–1865 (1971)
- Study In Power: John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Philanthropist. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. (1953)
- Ford with the collaboration of Frank Ernest Hill. 3 vols. (1954–1963)
References
- ProQuest 2030557036.
The modern concept of oral history was developed in the 1940s by American historian and journalist Joseph Allan Nevins and his associates at Columbia University
- ^ a b Immersed in Great Affairs - Allan Nevins and the Heroic Age of American History by Gerald L. Fetner Archived May 13, 2013, at the Wayback Machine January 2004 - SUNY Press
- ^ a b "Allan Nevins Facts". YourDictionary. Archived from the original on October 24, 2020. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
- ^ "Allan Nevins Summary". Bookrags.com. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
- ^ [1][permanent dead link]
- ^ "Allan Nevins - American author". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
- ^ Gerald L. Fetner, Immersed in Great Affairs: Allan Nevins and the Heroic Age of American History. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. p. 63.
- ^ Fetner, Immersed in Great Affairs, p. 41.
- American Academy of Achievement.
- Battle Cry of Freedom
- ^ "National Book Awards – 1972". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-17.
- ^ Gerald L. Fetner. Immersed in Great Affairs: Allan Nevins and the Heroic Age of American History. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. p. 4.
- ^ Ferdinand Lundberg. The Rockefeller Syndrome. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1975. p. 145.
- ISBN 9781884964336.
- ^ The Ludlow Massacre still matters, The New Yorker, Ben Mauk, April 18, 2014. Retrieved December 26, 2017.
- ^ Nevins, Allan (February 6, 1962). "Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage". Dodd, Mead. Retrieved February 6, 2019 – via Google Books.
Further reading
- Fetner, Gerald L. Immersed in Great Affairs: Allan Nevins and the Heroic Age of American History (State University of New York Press. 2004). 243pp; scholarly biography. excerpt
- Krout, John A. "Allan Nevins—An Appreciation" pp v-vii in Donald Sheehan and Harold C. Syrett, eds. Essays in American Historiography: Papers Presented in Honor of Allan Nevins (1962)(INVALID LINK) online
- Middlekauff, Robert. "Telling the Story of the Civil War: Allan Nevins as a Narrative Historian." The Huntington Library Quarterly (1993): 67–81. in JSTOR
- Tingley, Donald F. "Allan Nevins: A Reminiscence." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 66.2 (1973): 177–186.