Henry R. Luce: A Political Portrait of the Man Who Created the American Century - Hardcover

Robert E. Herzstein

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684193604 ISBN 13: 9780684193601

Publisher: Scribner, 1994

Synopsis

The "American Century" was an idea that the founder of Time, Life, and Fortune preached to two generations of Americans, using the persuasive powers of his propaganda empire. Herzstein (history, U. of South Carolina) examines Luce's political ideas and their influence as the century which he named comes to an end and the 100th anniversary of Luce's birth approaches. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

About this title

About the Author

Robert E. Herzstein is Carolina Research Professor of History at the University of South Carolina.

Reviews

As the subtitle suggests, this is less a full life of Time founder Luce (1898-1967) than a partial, balanced account of his work and influence. Herzstein ( Waldheim: The Missing Years ) traces Luce's Middle American hometown instincts to his boyhood as a "mishkid" (of missionary parents) in China, and deftly tells how Luce and Yale classmate Briton Hadden in 1922 conceived Time , a newsmagazine for a new age. Luce's business acumen led him to found Fortune and Life , and he turned Time, Inc. into his "missionary compound," launching attacks on Franklin D. Roosevelt, denouncing Japan while promoting China and in 1941 proclaiming "The American Century," an era of American-led internationalism. Herzstein closely describes Time, Inc.'s views of Russia and China, including Luce's clashes with famed correspondents Theodore White and John Hersey, as well as Luce's jousts and alliances with the politicians of the day. Unfortunately, Herzstein ends his narrative in 1945, losing a chance for a rounder portrait of his subject. Nevertheless, his epilogue, citing Luce's achievements, like boosting global interventionism and domestic fairness, and his weaknesses, like paving the way for McCarthyism, provides a judicious summation of Luce's legacy. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Herzstein (History/Univ. of South Carolina) offers a liberal's critical appraisal of the life, times, and fortunes of Henry Robinson Luce at the height of his considerable powers during the convulsive period that preceded and encompassed WW II. On the evidence of this impeccably researched text, however, ``promoted'' might have been a better choice of words than ``created'' for the subtitle. Which is not to say that the influential founder of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines would have quarreled with the author's overstated designation. Drawing on access to Luce's personal papers and those of his formidable wife, Clare Boothe, and from interviews with surviving colleagues, Herzstein presents a thematically organized account of an evangelist on a crusade. Born in China to Presbyterian missionaries in 1898, the Yale-educated publisher was a true believer in the US as an enlightened, interventionist force for good throughout a world beset by evil and despotism. Accordingly, Luce proselytized relentlessly on behalf of capitalism, Christianity, and the Republican Party. Although the grandeur of Luce's vision was sweeping, the realities of his workaday relations with notables and subordinates are equally fascinating. The author recounts how headstrong correspondents (Whittaker Chambers, John Hersey, Archibald MacLeish, et al.) caused their employer considerable grief in covering his beloved China, communism, the USSR, and other touchy subjects. And for all the help he had provided in combating isolationism on the home front, Luce never gained much favor with New Dealers. In the global marketplace for ideas, though, he made his mark, if only for a while. Although Luce lived until 1967, Herzstein halts the narrative at the start of the Cold War and closes with a hindsightful appreciation of where his protagonist's idealistic patriotism went wrong. Without ever diminishing Luce's achievements and contributions, in fact, the author manages to present him as a man who lacked the wisdom and wit to realize that his grand visions were, in fact, just that: visions. In brief, then, an interpretive, warts-and-all portrait of a consequential conservative. (8 pages of photos--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Founder of the Time-Life magazine empire, FDR hater, and champion of American world leadership, Luce presents an anachronistic face to the modern biographer. Raised in China by Protestant missionaries and endowed with prep-school and Yale educations, Luce projected his firmly felt piety, probusiness sentiments, and internationalism onto Time; if media moguls nowadays tread lightly on editorial departments, Luce felt no such compunction. Luce advocated various political causes and conceived himself a kingmaker in Republican Party politics. Created on a shoestring, his chatty, waggish roundup of the week's news made him millions, with which he launched Life in 1936. His press power, enhanced by his glamorous wife, Clare Boothe, soon reached 25 percent of Americans and was trifled with at peril. Herzstein extracts from the archives evidence of how Luce worked and offers anecdotes of Luce's meetings, crusades (famously, and with the least effect, on behalf of his beloved China), and autocratic editorial style. A meticulously detail-minded historian who shuts down his story with the onset of the Cold War (Luce died in 1967), Herzstein has successfully cornered the professional side of this influential publisher and coiner of the phrase "The American Century"; readers addicted to the personal lives of the famous will have to wait for another sort of biography. Gilbert Taylor

Herzstein (history, Univ. of South Carolina) has written a fair-minded biography of Luce, the man who founded Time, Life , and Fortune. "I am biased in favor of God, the Republican Party, and free enterprise," Luce once said. As his magazines grew and began to have great influence over U.S. public opinion, Luce did not hesitate to see that they reflected his viewpoint. Herzstein ( Roosevelt & Hitler , LJ 11/1/89), has written a scholarly work that chronicles Luce's feuds with President Roosevelt and his persistent support of Chiang Kai-shek in China. Recommended for most libraries.
- Rebecca Wondriska, Trinity Coll. Lib., Hartford, Ct.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684193604
• ISBN 13: 9780684193601
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 512