David M. Kennedy (historian)

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For the politician, see David M. Kennedy.

David M. Kennedy is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian specializing in American history. He is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University and the Director of the Center for the Study of the North American West. Professor Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic analysis and cultural analysis with social history and political history.

Kennedy is responsible for the recent editions of the popular history textbook The American Pageant. Earlier in his career, he won the Bancroft Prize for his Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (1970) and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for World War I, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980). He won the Pulitzer Prize for Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999).

Born in Seattle, Kennedy received his A.B. in History from Stanford and MA and PhD from Yale. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and, according to the jacket copy of The American Pageant, is married and the father of two sons and a daughter.

[edit] Paul Krugman book review controversy

On October 21, 2007, Professor Kennedy wrote a scathing review of the book "Conscience Of a Liberal" by Princeton University professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman; Kennedy described Krugman as "anti-economist" and compared Krugman to film-maker Michael Moore and radio host Rush Limbaugh.^[1] Krugman and other scholars unearthed several inaccuracies in Kennedy's review. For example, Kennedy wrote that "Kansas, whatever its other crimes and misdemeanors, is not customarily regarded as the birthplace of Prohibition" while Krugman points out that "Carrie Nation wielded her ax in Kansas - and Kansas was the first state to ban alcohol in its constitution".^[2] Noted Princeton Professor of American History Sean Wilentz also argued that the Kansas comment was justified: "And although many places vie for the honor or ignominy of hatching Prohibition, in 1880 Kansas did become the first state to include a prohibition provision in its Constitution — which is certainly enough to justify Krugman’s passing comment on the matter."^[3] Wilentz went on to make a more fundamental criticism of the review, "Kennedy criticizes Krugman’s reliability by picking at nits and slamming plausible assertions. A reviewer shortchanges his readers when he blows up an error but ignores when the author gets the matter right. A reasonable person might conclude that Kennedy had his hatchet out for Krugman. His attack did not do us historians and reviewers proud."

Economist Mark Thoma criticized the fact that the Times chose a historian—rather than an economist—to review the book.^[4] Another economist, Brad Delong of Berkeley, found that Kennedy's use of a quotation to call into question Krugman's credentials as an economist to be taken out of context.^[5] Kennedy quoted the American Economic Association founding president Francis Amasa Walker as asserting that an economist was a faithful believer in laissez-faire and that this was “not... the test of economic orthodoxy, merely.... [But] used to decide whether a man were an economist at all.” Delong summarized the speech from which the quote was taken, "The Recent Progress of Political Economy in the United States," as arguing the opposite view: "(a) the better part of economists had never imposed such a test, (b) the worse part of economists in the United States who posed as "guardians of the true [laissez-faire] faith" had lost their influence, and (c) the subject was much the better for it."

[edit] Books

• Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (1970)
  • John Gilmary Shea Prize, 1970
  • Bancroft Prize, 1971
• Social Thought in America and Europe, co-editor with Paul A. Robinson (1970)
• Progressivism: The Critical Issues, editor (1971)
• The American People in the Depression (1973)
• The American People in the Age of Kennedy (West Haven: Pendulum Press, 1973)
• The American Pageant: A History of the Republic, co-author with Thomas A. Bailey and Lizabeth Cohen (original 1979), Thirteenth Edition (2006).
• Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980)
  • Pulitzer Prize Finalist, 1981
• Power and Responsibility: Case Studies in American Leadership, co-editor with Michael Parrish (1986)
• The American Spirit: United States History as Seen by Contemporaries, co-editor with Thomas A. Bailey (1983)
• Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999)
  • Pulitzer Prize, 2000
  • Francis Parkman Prize, 2000
  • Ambassador's Prize, 2000
  • California Gold Medal for Literature, 2000

[edit] References