Background
Himmelfarb, Gertrude was born on August 8, 1922 in New York City. Daughter of Max and Bertha (Lerner) Himmelfarb.
( In The Moral Imagination , Gertrude Himmelfarb, one ...)
In The Moral Imagination , Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of America's most distinguished intellectual historians, explores the minds and lives of some of the most brilliant and provocative thinkers of modern times. In their distinctive ways, she argues, they exemplify what Burke two centuries ago and Trilling most recently have called the moral imagination. Himmelfarb describes how each of these thinkers, coming from different traditions, responding to different concerns, and writing in different genres, shared a moral passion that permeated their work. It is this passion that makes their reflectionson politics and literature, religion and society, marriage and sexsometimes unpredictable, often controversial, always exciting, and as illuminating and pertinent today as they were then. The second edition includes a revised introduction and three new essays on Adam Smith, Lord Acton, and Alfred Marshall.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1442218290/?tag=2022091-20
(Lord Acton is the author of the maxim, "Power tends to co...)
Lord Acton is the author of the maxim, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." In this intellectual biography, Gertrude Himmelfarb regards Acton as a man more of our age than of his own. He was a Liberal Catholic and a distinguished historian, and his vigorous denunciations of nationalism, racism, statism, and bigotry rank among the classics of political and social thought.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1942503210/?tag=2022091-20
(As the debate over values grows ever more divisive, one o...)
As the debate over values grows ever more divisive, one of the most eminent historians of the Victorian era reminds readers that values are no substitute for virtues--and that the Victorian considered hard work, thrift, respectability, and charity virtues essential to a worthwhile life. "An elegant, literate defense of ninteenth-century English mores and morals."--New York.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679764909/?tag=2022091-20
(In these brilliant essays, Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of Am...)
In these brilliant essays, Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of America's most respected scholars of Victorian thought and culture, explores the many facets, public and private, of the Victorian idea of morality. Incisively and provocatively she illuminates the "moral imagination" of the Victorians, "the imagination that treasured the complexity of the heart and mind and that sought, by aesthetic means as well as ethical, to adorn and enhance rather than destroy the 'decent drapery of life.'" The conventional view of Victorianism?a Family Shakespeare purged of indelicacies, piano legs sheathed in pantaloons, and the works of male and female authors chastely residing on separate shelves?gives way to the subtle and sympathetic analysis of an ethos that combined a profound sense of social and moral responsibility with a remarkable tolerance for idiosyncrasy and individuality. Marriage and Morals Among the Victorians invites us to reconsider the complex and colorful panorama of ideas and attitudes, beliefs and behavior, that goes under the name of Victorianism?and it reconsiders well our own relation to that much abused and misunderstood culture. "An important book that deserves a wide readership. It deserves to be read for the critical quality of Miss Himmelfarb's mind and the constant questioning of fashionable attitudes. One does not have to agree with her to enjoy the characteristic sharpness of her writing, or the characteristic breadth of her reading."?New York Times Book Review. "A collection of extraordinarily intelligent essays, held together not by a single thread of argument but by the sustained moral imagination of an acute student of nineteenth-century life and thought....Miss Himmelfarb's essays make clear that there was nothing wrong with either the Victorians' morality or their imaginations."?National Review.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566633702/?tag=2022091-20
( In an elegant, eminently readable work, one of our most...)
In an elegant, eminently readable work, one of our most distinguished intellectual historians gives us a brilliant revisionist history. The Roads to Modernity reclaims the Enlightenmentan extraordinary time bursting with new ideas about human nature, politics, society, and religion--from historians who have downgraded its importance and from scholars who have given preeminence to the Enlightenment in France over concurrent movements in England and America. Contrasting the Enlightenments in the three nations, Himmelfarb demonstrates the primacy and wisdom of the British, exemplified in such thinkers as Adam Smith, David Hume, and Edmund Burke, as well as the unique and enduring contributions of the American Founders. It is their Enlightenments, she argues, that created a social ethichumane, compassionate, and realisticthat still resonates strongly today, in America perhaps even more than in Europe. The Roads to Modernity is a remarkable and illuminating contribution to the history of ideas.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400077222/?tag=2022091-20
(In these provocative essays, one of our most distinguishe...)
In these provocative essays, one of our most distinguished historians looks into the abyss of the present. Himmelfarb exposes the intellectual and spiritual impoverishment of some of our most fashionable current ideas--and shows how the vogue for historical structuralism has made it possible to trivialize the tragedy of the Holocaust.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679759239/?tag=2022091-20
(Where "Victorianism" once conjured up an image of smugnes...)
Where "Victorianism" once conjured up an image of smugness, hypocrisy, and mindlessness, it now suggests quite the reverse: an age of high intellectual, moral, and spiritual tension, in which the typical problems of modernity were posed in their most acute forms. Gertrude Himmelfarb's distinguished piece of intellectual history explores these tensions and problems with sympathy, candor, and critical subtlety. Victorian Minds is a study of intellectuals in crisis and of ideologies in transition, rendered with an elegance of style and thought. "Few works that I know convey the excitement of the intellectual life of 19th-century England as immediately. ... The essays are remarkable no less for the cogency of their wit than for the range and precision of their scholarship"?Lionel Trilling. "Precise and discriminating ... an exemplary study of the 19th century and a superb introduction to the 20th."?Robert A. Nisbet. "Miss Himmelfarb is a writer to whom the organization of ideas into intricate shapes and patterns is imperative, and like many of her subjects-and comparatively few modern intellectuals-she is capable of poised and meaningful generalization."? A. S. Byatt.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566630770/?tag=2022091-20
( It is one of the curiosities of history that the most r...)
It is one of the curiosities of history that the most remarkable novel about Jews and Judaism, predicting the establishment of the Jewish state, should have been written in 1876 by a non-Jew ? a Victorian woman and a formidable intellectual, who is generally regarded as one of the greatest of English novelists. And it is still more curious that Daniel Deronda, George Eliots last novel, should have been dismissed, by many of her admirers at the time and by some critics since, as something of an anomaly, an inexplicable and unfortunate turn in her life and work. Yet Eliot herself was passionately committed to that novel, having prepared herself for it by an extraordinary feat of scholarly research in five languages (including Hebrew), exploring the ancient, medieval, and modern sources of Jewish history. Three years later, to reenforce that commitment, she wrote an essay, the very last of her writing, reaffirming the heritage of the Jewish ?nation and the desirability of a Jewish state ? this well before the founders of Zionism had conceived of that mission. Why did this Victorian novelist, born a Christian and an early convert to agnosticism, write a book so respectful of Judaism and so prescient about Zionism? And why at a time when there were no pogroms or persecutions to provoke her? What was the general conception of the ?Jewish question, and how did Eliot reinterpret that ?question, for her time as well as ours? Gertrude Himmelfarb, a leading Victorian scholar, has undertaken to unravel the mysteries of Daniel Deronda. And the mysteries of Eliot herself: a novelist who deliberately wrote a book she knew would bewilder many of her readers, a distinguished woman who opposed the enfranchisement of women, a moralist who flouted the most venerable of marital conventions ? above all, the author of a novel that is still an inspiration or provocation to readers and critics alike.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594035962/?tag=2022091-20
(From one of today's most respected historians and cultura...)
From one of today's most respected historians and cultural critics comes a new book examining the gulf in American society--a division that cuts across class, racial, ethnic, political and sexual lines. One side originated in the tradition of republican virtue, the other in the counterculture of the late 1960s. Himmelfarb argues that, while the latter generated the dominant culture of today-particularly in universities, journalism, television, and film--a "dissident culture" continues to promote the values of family, a civil society, sexual morality, privacy, and patriotism. Proposing democratic remedies for our moral and cultural diseases, Himmelfarb concludes that it is a tribute to Americans that we remain "one nation" even as we are divided into "two cultures."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375704108/?tag=2022091-20
professor of history and author
Himmelfarb, Gertrude was born on August 8, 1922 in New York City. Daughter of Max and Bertha (Lerner) Himmelfarb.
Bachelor, Brooklyn College, 1942. Master of Arts, University Chicago, 1944. Doctor of Philosophy, University Chicago, 1950.
Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Rhode Island College, 1976. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Kenyon College, 1985. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Adelphi University, 1989.
Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Boston University, 1987. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Yale University, 1990. Little D. (honorary), Smith College, 1977.
Little D. (honorary), Lafayette College, 1978. Little D. (honorary), Jewish Theological Seminary, 1978. Little D. (honorary), Williams College, 1989.
Doctor of Laws (honorary), Union College, 1989.
Professor, of History, Graduate School, City University New York 1965-1988, Professor Emeritus since 1988. Fellow, American Philosophical Society, American Academy, of Arts and Sciences, Royal Historical Society, et cetera Many public and professional appointments.
Rockefeller Foundation Aw"ard 1962-1963.
Guggenheim Fellow 1955-1956, 1957-1958. Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (Rhode Island College) 1976, (Kenyon College) 1985.
Honorary Doctor of Letters (Smith College) 1977, Lafayette College.
( It is one of the curiosities of history that the most r...)
(As the debate over values grows ever more divisive, one o...)
(Where "Victorianism" once conjured up an image of smugnes...)
( In The Moral Imagination , Gertrude Himmelfarb, one ...)
(In these brilliant essays, Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of Am...)
(From one of today's most respected historians and cultura...)
( In an elegant, eminently readable work, one of our most...)
(In these provocative essays, one of our most distinguishe...)
(Lord Acton is the author of the maxim, "Power tends to co...)
Trustee National Humanities Center. Board Woodrow Wilson International Center, British Institute of the United States, Institute Contemporary Studies. Member of council scholars Library of Congress.
Member of council academic advisors American Enterprise Institute. Associate scholar Ethics and Public Policy Center. Fellow British Academy, American Philosophical Society, Royal History Society, American Academy Arts and Sciences, Society American Historians.
Member American History Association, Conference on British Studies.
F C.
Married Irving Kristol, January 18, 1942. Children— William, Elizabeth.