Henry Steele Commager

Henry Steele Commager (October 25, 1902 – March 2, 1998) was an American historian who helped define Modern liberalism in the United States for two generations through his forty books and 700 essays and reviews. His principal scholarly works were his 1936 biography of Theodore Parker; his intellectual history The American Mind: An Interpretation of American Thought and Character since the 1880's (1950), which focuses on the evolution of liberalism in the American political mind from the 1880s to the 1940s; and his intellectual history Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment (1977). In addition, he edited one of the most influential compilations of American historical documents, Documents of American...