The American Political Tradition
“The American Political Tradition” published in 1948 was written by a well-known historian at Colombia University. Richard Hofstadter was born on August 6, 1916, in Buffalo, New York. He attended both the University of Buffalo and Columbia University where he studied philosophy and history. Hofstadter was married twice and later in 1970 died from leukemia. Throughout his life Hofstadter had a lot of published works including Social Darwinism in American Thought, William Leggett, Spokesman of Jacksonian Democracy, The Age of Reform, The United States: the History of a Republic, and many more. Hofstadter’s purpose for writing this book was to give people a better understanding about our history. He wanted to help Americans understand who was involved in the shaping of America and its government. It also explains what each person contributed to the making of America. Hofstadter did an excellent job with his book; it explained everything very well and in great detail. This book was written for people wanting to know more about the history of America. More specifically the people and how they created the government. It was not that easy to read, and also may contain a little too much information for younger people to take in and remember. At first it was a bit difficult to read, but once you get a little bit farther it becomes a lot easier. It is just a lot of information to take in, although I know some of the facts from the book already. “The American Political Tradition” contains a lot of new and some old information about the history of America. Hofstadter’s book is extremely biased, it gives facts about the people that influenced and created America, but includes a lot of Hofstadter’s opinions. It is not very accurate throughout the whole thing and therefore not a very reliable source. The book thoroughly describes the people that helped America become what it is today and their ideas on what was going on. It is interesting to find out all this new