by David Greenberg

Two weeks have passed since the death of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and it just struck me that Open University hasn't noted his death. Rather than struggle to say something new, I refer readers to several tributes: by Sean Wilentz, Open U's Ted Widmer, Bob Dallek, Sam Tanenhaus, Paul Starr. Not enough? Here's History News Network's aggregation of pieces about Schlesinger, and a symposium on Cliopatra about his contributions. I didn't know Schlesinger very well--we'd spoken maybe a dozen times--but I had the pleasure of being taken to lunch by him once at the Century Club (a ritual that many of his eulogists have described). It was also a pleasure to have him line edit my recent biography of Calvin Coolidge, for Henry Holt's American Presidents series, over which he presided. Naturally, he improved my manuscript, but even more gratifying to me was that he endorsed (with some quibbles) a reading of Coolidge that was rather different from his own. A week before his death, I was on a panel at the New-York Historical Society to discuss the presidency and the book series. I attributed the packed house to the announcement that Arthur would be there. As he was.