SOURCE: "New Frontiers," in Commentary, Vol. 36, No. 1, July, 1963, pp. 76-8.

In the review below, Coser argues that Schlesinger's The Politics of Hope, "attempts to define the lineaments of a new pragmatic liberalism," but that Schlesinger's conclusions are often partisan and do not reflect the "critical and unattached" judgment characteristic of his earlier works.

This collection of essays [The Politics of Hope], written in the 1950's and early 1960's for a variety of magazines, reflects the amazing catholicity of Mr. Schlesinger's tastes and interests. His range is wide indeed. There are pieces here on the virtues of dissent (written in the age of Eisenhower) and pieces on the need for greatness and heroic leadership (written at the onset of the Kennedy age). Mr. Schlesinger has discussed the Oppenheimer case (in the Atlantic), Whittaker Chambers (in the Saturday Review), and in Esquire he raised the question, "What has unmanned the...