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WORKS of philosophy can last for millennia, novels for centuries. Works of history, if they're really good, survive maybe a generation. But Richard 's The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It is now celebrating its fiftieth year in print and remai ....

Middle of Essay
.... thesis, under Merle Curti, at Columbia University, and it remains one of the most important books on the subject. After graduating, taught briefly at the University of Maryland but soon returned to Columbia, where he taught for the balance of his career. There he wrote not only The American Political Tradition but several other provocative and enduring works. Of these perhaps the most notable was his 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Age of Reform, which introduced his idea of "status politics" -- the notion that people act less from pure economic self-interest than from a desire to preserve their social standing -- and controversially portraye ....