Volume 44, Number 10 · June 12, 1997
America's First Great Man
By Edmund S. Morgan
The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649
edited by Richard S. Dunn, edited by James Savage, edited by Laetitia Yeandle
Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 799 pp., $100.00
The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649 Abridged Edition
edited by Richard S. Dunn, edited by Laetitia Yeandle
Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 354 pp., $19.95 (paper)
What makes a great man great? Historians occasionally ponder the question in assessing public figures, men or sometimes women (Queen Elizabeth I), who have given direction to a whole society. It is tempting, and sometimes fashionable, to read them out of history altogether, in favor of the impersonal forces and '-isms' that historians like to discover behind everything. And un-great men and women leading ordinary lives have commanded more attention recently than history's movers and shakers. But if we allow that some individuals were able to change or direct the course of history, it is easier to recognize them than it is to say what enabled them to do it. In America we may acknowledge Washington and Lincoln as great men, and probably Franklin and Jefferson and maybe Franklin Delano Roosevelt and possibly even several more, but we would probably disagree about precisely what it was that made them great, what it was that enabled them to give a lasting direction to the course of events.
Review, 3492 words
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