Eric Frederick Goldman (June 17, 1916 – February 19, 1989) was an American

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

, Rollins Professor of History at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

, and Presidential advisor.

Life

Born in Washington, D.C., United States, he was educated in public schools in

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean t ...

, and graduated from

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

with a Ph.D. in history at age 22. He wrote on national affairs for ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

'' magazine. He joined

as an assistant professor in 1942. He became a full professor in 1955, until retirement in 1985. He was special advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1963 to 1966. He served as president of the

Society of American Historians The Society of American Historians, founded in 1939, encourages and honors literary distinction in the writing of history and biography about American topics. The approximately 300 members include professional historians, independent scholars, jou ...

from 1962 to 1969. From 1959 to 1967, he was the moderator of the public affairs show '' The Open Mind'', on

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

. He married Joanna R. Jackson (died 1980). His papers are held at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

, and the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the Californ ...

Writings

Goldman's most influential work appeared in 1952: ''Rendezvous with Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform'', covering reform efforts from the Grant Administration into the Truman years . For decades it was a staple of the undergraduate curriculum in history, highly regarded for its style and its exposition of modern American liberalism. According to Priscilla Roberts: : Lively, well-written, and highly readable, it provided an overview of eight decades of reformers, complete with arresting vignettes of numerous individuals, and stressed the continuities among successful American reform movements. Writing at the height of the Cold War, he also argued that the fundamental liberal tradition of the United States was moderate, centrist, and incrementalist, and decidedly non-socialist and none-totalitarian. While broadly sympathetic to the cause of American reform, Goldman was far from uncritical toward his subjects, faulting progressives of World War I for their lukewarm reception of the League of Nations, American reformers of the 1920s for their emphasis on freedom of lifestyles rather than economic reform, and those of the 1930s for overly tolerant attitude toward Soviet Russia. His views of past American reformers encapsulated the conventional, liberal, centrist orthodoxy of the early 1950s, from its support for anti-communism and international activism abroad and New Deal-style big government at home, to its condemnation of McCarthyism.

Awards

* 1953

Bancroft Prize The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas. It was established in 1948, with a bequest from Frederic Bancroft, in his memory and that of his brother, ...

* 1962; 1966

Emmy The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

Works

* "The White House and the intellectuals", ''Harper's'' January 1969 * ''Rendezvous With Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform'', Knopf, 1952 (reprint 25th Anniversary Edition, Vintage, 1977, Ivan R. Dee, 2001, ) * ''The Crucial Decade, America 1945-55'', Knopf, 1956 * ''The Crucial Decade - And After, America 1945-60'', Vintage Books, 1961, * ''The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson'', Knopf, 1969 * ''John Bach McMaster, American Historian'', Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania press; 1943.

References

External links

Civil Rights Greensboro: Eric Frederick Goldman
1916 births 1989 deaths Writers from Washington, D.C. Johns Hopkins University faculty Johns Hopkins University alumni Princeton University faculty 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers Bancroft Prize winners 20th-century American male writers {{US-historian-stub