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YIELD OF THE YEARS by Dexter Perkins

YIELD OF THE YEARS

By

Pub Date: June 24th, 1969
Publisher: Little, Brown

Boston Brahmin born into a family of impeccable Republican allegiance, Mr. Perkins offers his memoirs and opinions--personal, academic and political. After Boston Latin, Harvard and assorted travels, he broke with the family pattern to support Woodrow Wilson whom he idolized to the end of his life and he became a liberal--the kind Mailer means when he speaks of ""a prince of the democratic state""--patrician, disciplined, generous, kind and bloodless. The first half of this autobiography is rather dull and involves his stately progress up the academic ladder. The second half with his views on many things and his own evolution of though in the field of foreign policy (from Wilson worship to modified rapture for FDR and pats on the head for Truman and JFK) also show his development from, idealist to pragmatist. At the close he endorses the American two-party system with all its untidiness. Perhaps more for the historian than the general reader although somewhat removed from the present day.