THE PAPERS OF ADLAI E. STEVENSON: Washington to Springfield, 1941-1948

by Adlai E. Stevenson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 8, 1972

Like the initial volume of the Stevenson papers (The Beginnings of Education, 1900-1941, p. 789) -- selected and meticulously annotated by Johnson and Evans -- this compilation draws on the large private correspondence and accreting public documents to provide a generous insight into the political and intellectual development of the man. Beginning with Stevenson's tour as Navy Secretary Knox's Special Assistant and concluding with his election to the governorship of Illinois, this second of eight projected volumes brings us much closer to the Libertyville Sage who is still remembered and mourned by those who believe that politics need not preclude civility, honesty, idealism, and the spirit of self-effacing humanity. Here, by way of example, we have not only the Governor's 1944 report of the Foreign Economic Administration's reconstruction mission to Italy -- a model synthesis of the aid situation facing the U.S. at the time -- but an intimate letter to Archibald MacLeish rejecting a plea to join the Department for Public and Cultural Relations in Washington after the war, in which he expressed the hope someday to return ""to those lowland pastures where the great foregather and find a small place again near the circle's edge."" We also have selections from the Stevenson archive covering the earlier U.N. period (as head of the American Preparatory Commission and as a delegate) as well as the 1948 gubernatorial campaign in which Stevenson said, in his opening speech, "". . . if I haven't been in politics, I have been all around it,"" a comment which aptly presaged his role as standard-bearer of the American political conscience in the '50's.

Pub Date: Feb. 8, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1972

Categories: NONFICTION