American historian
Arthur L. Herman (born 1956) is an American
popular historian . He is a senior fellow at
Hudson Institute .
[1]
Biography
Herman's father Arthur L. Herman, a scholar of
Sanskrit , was a professor of philosophy at the
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point .
Herman received his B.A. from the
University of Minnesota and M.A. and Ph.D. in history from
Johns Hopkins University . He spent a semester abroad at
The University of Edinburgh in
Scotland .
[1] His 1984 dissertation research dealt with the political thought of early-17th-century French Huguenots.
[2]
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Herman taught at
Sewanee: The University of the South ,
George Mason University ,
Georgetown and
The Catholic University of America . He was the founder and coordinator of the Western Heritage Program in the
Smithsonian's Campus on the Mall lecture series.
[3]
[4]
His 2001 book on the
Scottish Enlightenment ,
How the Scots Invented the Modern World , was a
New York Times bestseller.
In 2008, he added to his body of work Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age , a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
[5]
In 1987, Herman married Beth Marla Warshofsky.
[6] He lives in
Washington, D.C.
[7]
Views
Herman generally employs the
Great Man perspective in his work, which is 19th-century historical methodology attributing human events and their outcomes to the singular efforts of great men that has been refined and qualified by such modern thinkers as
Sidney Hook .
He did not join the ranks of the so-called
declinists after examining the works of
Friedrich Nietzsche ,
Michel Foucault ,
Henry Adams ,
Brooks Adams ,
Oswald Spengler , and
Arnold Toynbee , who expressed pessimism about the fate of the West, and remains cautiously optimistic about the future of the Western civilization.
[8]
[9]
He argues that after passing through the critical era of rapid geopolitical changes in the 20th century driven by an "ideological fervor to transform humanity and create a more perfect world order", the world finally entered in the 21st century into an era of relative stability "defined by the balance-of-power geopolitics."
[10]
Herman advocates embracing the U.S. history in its entirety, including the
American Civil War , rather than sanitizing it after the fact: "America is a country where the process of conflict and reconciliation, combined with the passage of time, brings out and embeds the qualities that make the United States one people and one community."
[11]
Works
External videos
Presentation by Herman on The Idea of Decline in Western History , March 18, 1997 ,
C-SPAN
Booknotes interview with Herman on Joseph McCarthy , February 6, 2000 ,
C-SPAN
Presentation by Herman on How the Scots Invented the Modern World , January 10, 2002 ,
C-SPAN
Presentation by Herman on To Rule the Waves , November 10, 2004 ,
C-SPAN
Presentation by Herman on Gandhi and Churchill , May 15, 2008 ,
C-SPAN
Presentation by Herman on Freedom's Forge , May 14, 2012 ,
C-SPAN
Q&A interview with Herman on Douglas MacArthur , June 26, 2016 ,
C-SPAN
The Idea Of Decline In Western History , Free Press, 1997
ISBN
978-0684827919 .
Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator , Free Press, 1999
ISBN
978-0684836256 .
How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It , Three Rivers Press 2002
ISBN
978-0609809990 .
To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World , HarperCollins, 2004
ISBN
978-0060534240 .
Gandhi and Churchill:The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age , Bantam, 2008
ISBN
978-0553804638 .
Freedom's Forge: How American Business produced victory in World War II , 2012
ISBN
978-1400069644
Herman, Arthur (2014).
The Cave and the Light : Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization .
ISBN
978-0553385663 .
Herman, Arthur L. (2016).
Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior . Presidio Press.
ISBN
978-0812985108 .
Herman, Arthur (2017). 1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder .
ISBN
978-0062570888 .
The Viking Heart: How Scandinavians Conquered the World , Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021
ISBN
978-1328595904
References
^
a
b
Hudson Institute Experts: Arthur Herman, Senior Fellow
^ Arthur L. Herman.
The Saumur assembly 1611: Huguenot political belief and action in the age of Marie de Medici [
permanent dead link ] . Johns Hopkins University , Dissertation by Arthur L. Herman, 1984.
^
The cave and the light: Plato vs. Aristotle and the struggle for the soul of Western civilization. Book Forum: Charles Murray, Alex J. Pollock, Arthur Herman , American Enterprise Institute , November 12, 2013.
^
Random House Author Spotlight: Arthur Herman . Retrieved 2008-07-07
^
2009 Pulitzer Prizes retrieved 2016-08-29
^
Style: Beth Marla Warshofsky Weds Arthur L. Herman , The New York Times , August 10, 1987.
^
"Arthur Herman, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt" . Archived from
the original on 2022-03-31. Retrieved 2022-03-19 .
^ Fareed Zakaria.
An Optimist's Lament , The New York Times , March 30, 1997.
^ Michael De Sapio.
Standing Athwart History: Can We Stop the Decline of the West? ,
The Imaginative Conservative , October 4, 2016.
^ Arthur Herman.
The New Era of Global Stability: The grand ideological conflicts that began in 1917 are giving way to old-fashioned geopolitics , The Wall Street Journal , Dec. 19, 2017.
^ Arthur L. Herman.
Confederate Statues Honor Timeless Virtues — Let Them Stay , National Review , August 19, 2017.
External links
International National Academics Other