Harvard Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.* (The Age of Jackson) has a serious quarrel to pick with his fellow scholars and with the teaching of history in U.S. schools. Too many of them, he thinks, have become victims of "historical senti-mentalism." Their view of the past has become clouded by a vogue of optimism, their work distorted by a wave of wishful thinking and a burning determination to push moral issues under the rug. In the current issue of Partisan Review, Professor Schlesinger states his case.
He begins it by taking issue with the scholars...