Synopses & Reviews
For more than a generation, Darnel Patrick Moynihan has inhabited the worlds of ideas and politics and has nourished both. At the center of virtually every major issue, he has offered a distinct voice, unique in this century -- often prescient, always independent, both scholarly and statesmanlike.
The contributors to this volume know Pat Moynihan as teacher, scholar, and colleague, and several worked for him in his illustrious career. They are a distinguished group -- former senator (and Rhodes Scholar) Bill Bradley; eminent social scientists Nathan Glazer, Seymour Martin Lipset, James Q.Wilson, Stephen Hess, Nicholas Eberstadt, Suzanne Garment, Michael Lacey; attorney Richard K. Eaton; government official Robert Peck; journalists Timothy Russert of Meet the Press and Michael Barone of Reader's Digest, and T. P. Moynihan. They span a good part of the political spectrum and themselves display Moynihan's reach into both political and intellectual life.
The contributors examine Moynihan's many areas of intellectual concern: ethnicity, social policy, international relations, public works and public architecture, and government secrecy. And they characterize him as public servant, from his role in four successive presidential administrations through his time as ambassador and senator.
Synopsis
One of the most distinguished figures in twentieth-century American politics, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was at the center of virtually every major political issue of his day, offering a distinct voice unique in its prescience, scholarliness, and statesmanlike manner. The contributors to this career-spanning assessment knew Moynihan as teacher, scholar, and colleague, and they use their diverse interactions with him to paint a picture of an extraordinary thinker with many areas of intellectual concern: social policy, international relations, public works, race relations, and government secrecy. In addition, the essayists explore Moynihan's role as a devoted public servant, from his experience in four successive presidential administrations through his time as ambassador and senator from New York.