Allan Nevins

Allan Nevins (May 20, 1890 - March 5, 1971) was an American historian and journalist.

Nevins earned an M.A. in English in 1913 from the University of Illinois. He worked as a journalist in New York City and began writing books on history. Nevins was appointed Dewitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University in 1931, two years after he joined the faculty there. He was later appointed Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University from 1940 to 1941 and again from 1964 to 1965. In 1948 he created the first oral history program to operate on an institutionalized basis in the U.S. which continues as Columbia University's Oral History Research Office.

Books

Nevins wrote more than 50 books, mainly political and business history and biography of the 19th century, in addition to his many newspaper and academic articles. The subjects of his biographies include Grover Cleveland, Abram Hewitt, Hamilton Fish, Henry Ford, John C. Frémont, Herbert Lehman, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry White. The biographies provide in-depth coverage of United States political, economic and diplomatic history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In most cases (Fish, Cleveland, Ford) they remain unequalled.

Nevins' greatest work was Ordeal of the Union (1947-71), an 8-volume comprehensive history of the coming of the Civil war, and the war itself. It remains the most detailed political, economic and military narrative of the era.

Nevins' biography of Grover Cleveland won the 1933 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. He also added significantly to the scholarship on President Cleveland by publishing a volume of Cleveland's correspondence from 1850-1908.

His biographer explains the Nevins style:

Nevins used narrative not only to tell a story but to propound moral lessons. It was not his inclination to deal in intellectual concepts or theories, like many academic scholars. He preferred emphasizing practical notions about the importance of national unity, principled leadership, liberal politics, enlightened journalism, the social responsibility of business and industry, and scientific and technical progress that added to the cultural improvement of humanity.

Nevins wrote several books on John D. and the Rockefeller family, said business journalist Ferdinand Lundberg:

It was in the course of doing work for the five Rockefeller books that Nevins developed the interesting thesis that the American corporate adventurers to whom Matthew Josephson gave the enduring name of ‘The Robber Barons’ were in fact American heroes, builders of the American civilization and democracy. He invited other historians to follow in his footsteps in this thesis, but so far nobody has conspicuously accepted. And if anyone does, one will be able to see the American intellectual horizon further muddled. I have given writers like Nevins the sobriquet of ‘counter-savants’. A savant, or man of learning, is devoted to increasing knowledge. And knowledge has the function of deepening understanding. A counter-savant, however, is a man of knowledge who uses his knowledge, for reasons known only to himself, to obfuscate understanding, to confuse readers. The fact is that Nevins’ corrective portrait of Rockefeller is not only false with respect to the central character, but frustrates understanding with the unsophisticated reader. (The Rockefeller Syndrome, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1975, p. 145.)

Radio

On radio, Nevins was the host of the 15-minute Adventures in Science, which covered a wide variety of medical and scientific topics. As a segment of CBS' Adult Education Series, it was broadcast from May 6, 1938 until August 18, 1957, airing on various days, usually in the late afternoon.

Major books

• The Evening post; a century of journalism (1922)
• The American states during and after the revolution, 1775-1789 (1927) online edition
• A History of American Life vol. VIII: The Emergence of Modern America 1865-1878 (1927)
• Frémont, the West's greatest adventurer; being a biography from certain hitherto unpublished sources of General John C. Frémont, together with his wife, Jessie Benton Frémont, and some account of the period of expansion which found a brilliant leader in the Pathfinder (1928) online edition
• Polk; the diary of a president, 1845-1849, covering the Mexican war, the acquisition of Oregon, and the conquest of California and the Southwest, (1929)
• Henry White; thirty years of American diplomacy (1930)
• Letters of Grover Cleveland, 1850-1908; (1933)
• Dictionary of American Biography (1934-36); Nevins wrote 40 articles on Alexander Hamilton, Rutherford B. Hayes, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, etc.
• Abram S. Hewitt: with same account of Peter Cooper. (1935)
• Hamilton Fish; the inner history of the Grant administration, (1936) online edition vol 1 online edition vol 2
• The Gateway to History 1938. online edition
• The emergence of modern America, 1865-1878 (1941)
• Ordeal of the Union (1947-1971).
  • 1. Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852;
  • 2. A House Dividing, 1852-1857;
  • 3. Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 1857-1859;
  • 4. Prologue to Civil War, 1859-1861;
  • 5. The Improvised War, 1861-1862;
  • 6. War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863;
  • 7. The Organized War, 1863-1864;
  • 8. The Organized War to Victory, 1864-1865
• Ford with the collaboration of Frank Ernest Hill, 3 vols. (1954-1963)
• John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. (1940)
• Study In Power: John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Philanthropist. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. (1953)

References

• Gerald L. Fetner, Immersed in Great Affairs: Allan Nevins and the Heroic Age of American History (2004)