Arthur L. Herman (born 1956) is an American

popular historian Popular history is a broad genre of historiography that takes a popular approach, aims at a wide readership, and usually emphasizes narrative, Personality type, personality and vivid detail over scholarly analysis. The term is used in contradistin ...

. He currently serves as a senior fellow at

Hudson Institute The Hudson Institute is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1961 in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, by futurist, military strategist, and systems theorist Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the RAND Corporat ...

.Hudson Institute Experts: Arthur Herman, Senior Fellow
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Biography

Herman's father Arthur L. Herman, a scholar of

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

, was a professor of philosophy at the

University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

. Herman received his B.A. from the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

and M.A. and Ph.D. in history from

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

. He spent a semester abroad at

The University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1582 ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

. His 1984 dissertation research dealt with the political thought of early-17th-century French Huguenots. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Herman taught at Sewanee: The University of the South,

George Mason University George Mason University (George Mason, Mason, or GMU) is a public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia with an independent City of Fairfax, Virginia postal address in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area. The university was origin ...

, Georgetown and

The Catholic University of America The Catholic University of America (CUA) is a private university, private Catholic church, Roman Catholic research university in Washington, D.C. It is a pontifical university of the Catholic Church in the United States and the only institution ...

. He was the founder and coordinator of the Western Heritage Program in the Smithsonian's Campus on the Mall lecture series. His 2001 book on the

Scottish Enlightenment The Scottish Enlightenment ( sco, Scots Enlichtenment, gd, Soillseachadh na h-Alba) was the period in 18th- and early-19th-century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. By the eighteenth century ...

, ''

How the Scots Invented the Modern World How may refer to: * How (greeting), a word used in some misrepresentations of Native American/First Nations speech * How, an interrogative word in English grammar Art and entertainment Literature * ''How'' (book), a 2007 book by Dov Seidma ...

'', was a ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' bestseller. In 2008, he added to his body of work ''Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age'', a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. In 1987, Herman married Beth Marla Warshofsky. He lives in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

Views

Herman generally employs the Great Man perspective in his work, which is 19th-century historical methodology attributing human events and their outcomes to the singular efforts of great men that has been refined and qualified by such modern thinkers as

Sidney Hook Sidney Hook (December 20, 1902 – July 12, 1989) was an American philosopher of pragmatism known for his contributions to the philosophy of history, the philosophy of education, political theory, and ethics. After embracing communism in his youth ...

. He did not join the ranks of the so-called '' declinists'' after examining the works of

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...

Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...

Henry Adams Henry Brooks Adams (February 16, 1838 – March 27, 1918) was an American historian and a member of the Adams political family, descended from two U.S. Presidents. As a young Harvard graduate, he served as secretary to his father, Charles Fra ...

Brooks Adams Peter Chardon Brooks Adams (June 24, 1848 – February 13, 1927) was an American attorney, historian, political scientist and a critic of capitalism. Early life and education Adams was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, on June 24, 1848, son of ...

Oswald Spengler Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (; 29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German historian and philosopher of history whose interests included mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best known ...

, and Arnold Toynbee, who expressed pessimism about the fate of the West, and remains cautiously optimistic about the future of the Western civilization. He argues that after passing through the critical era of rapid geopolitical changes in the 20th century driven by an "ideological fervor to transform humanity and create a more perfect world order", the world finally entered in the 21st century into an era of relative stability "defined by the balance-of-power geopolitics." Herman advocates embracing the U.S. history in its entirety, including the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

, rather than sanitizing it after the fact: "America is a country where the process of conflict and reconciliation, combined with the passage of time, brings out and embeds the qualities that make the United States one people and one community."Arthur L. Herman
Confederate Statues Honor Timeless Virtues — Let Them Stay
''National Review'', August 19, 2017.

Works

* ''The Idea Of Decline In Western History'', Free Press, 1997 . * ''Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator'', Free Press, 1999 . * '' How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It'', Three Rivers Press 2002 . * ''To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World'', HarperCollins, 2004 . * ''Gandhi and Churchill:The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age'', Bantam, 2008 . * ''Freedom's Forge: How American Business produced victory in World War II'', 2012 * * ''Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior'', Random House, 2016 . * * ''The Viking Heart: How Scandinavians Conquered the World'', Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021

References

External links

* *
''Booknotes'' interview with Herman on ''Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator'', February 6, 2000.
*
C-SPAN ''Q&A'' interview with Herman talking about his book, ''Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior'', May 24, 2016.

Biographical profile
''Hudson Institute''.

''George Mason Universities Libraries'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Herman, Arthur L. 1956 births 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Living people Smithsonian Institution people Johns Hopkins University alumni Catholic University of America faculty Georgetown University faculty George Mason University faculty Hudson Institute American male non-fiction writers