Immersed in Great Affairs: Allan Nevins and the Heroic Age of American History

Immersed in Great Affairs is the first book-length biography of noted historian and journalist Allan Nevins. In a career that spanned nearly three-quarters of the twentieth century, Nevins won two Pulitzer Prizes, helped draft John F. Kennedy’s acceptance speech at the 1960 Democratic National Convention, composed the monumental eight-volume history of the American Civil War, Ordeal of the Union, and associated with, among others, Adlai Stevenson, Walter Lippmann, Arthur Schlesinger Sr., Charles Scribner, Abraham Flexner, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. This book traces his beginnings as a journalist in the early 1900s with the New York Evening Post and the New York World through his years as a contributor to the New York Times Magazine. Nevins not only influenced thoughtful, general readers through his articles, editorials, and reviews, but also made a lasting impression on the writing of American history and nurtured a whole generation of young scholars as DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. A narrative historian in an age of growing reliance on social science concepts and theories, Nevins remained committed to telling a story and to using history to teach moral lessons.