1929. Lippman, a Pulitzer Prize winning political columnist, helped found the liberal New Republic magazine. His writings there influenced Woodrow Wilson, who selected Lippman to help formulate his famous Fourteen Points and develop the concept of the League of Nations. A Preface to Morals endorses liberal democracy. Partial Contents: Part I The Dissolution of the Ancestral Order; Part II The Foundations of Humanism; and Part III The Genius of Modernity.
"Far and away Walter Lippmann's best book.... [He] has not merely, as other writers have done, shown us the picture of our own confusion, with our ancient sanctions and authorities gone and obliged to stand on our own human feet; he gives us the assurance that we shall be able to do so, that we have begun to do so already."
--Edmund Wilson, "New Republic"
"To read it is a continuous intellectual excitement. It is the record of a finely endowed mind with not a little first-hand experience of human affairs, trying to think its way through and out of the moral condition of our time. It is full of penetrating analyses and of sound criticisms."
--"Saturday Review"
"One of the finest qualities of this 'Preface to Morals' is a certain strain of literary self-conquest, wholly in keeping with the author's idea of asceticism, which saves the book from falling into the slough of cleverness, and gives it a lean literary vigor and sincerity.... This is a soundjand valuable book: honest, unafraid and austere."
--"Yale Review"
"Far and away Walter Lippmann's best book.... [He] has not merely, as other writers have done, shown us the picture of our own confusion, with our ancient sanctions and authorities gone and obliged to stand on our own human feet; he gives us the assurance that we shall be able to do so, that we have begun to do so already."
--Edmund Wilson, New Republic
"To read it is a continuous intellectual excitement. It is the record of a finely endowed mind with not a little first-hand experience of human affairs, trying to think its way through and out of the moral condition of our time. It is full of penetrating analyses and of sound criticisms."
--Saturday Review
"One of the finest qualities of this 'Preface to Morals' is a certain strain of literary self-conquest, wholly in keeping with the author's idea of asceticism, which saves the book from falling into the slough of cleverness, and gives it a lean literary vigor and sincerity.... This is a soundjand valuable book: honest, unafraid and austere."
--Yale Review
-Far and away Walter Lippmann's best book.... [He] has not merely, as other writers have done, shown us the picture of our own confusion, with our ancient sanctions and authorities gone and obliged to stand on our own human feet; he gives us the assurance that we shall be able to do so, that we have begun to do so already.-
--Edmund Wilson, New Republic
-To read it is a continuous intellectual excitement. It is the record of a finely endowed mind with not a little first-hand experience of human affairs, trying to think its way through and out of the moral condition of our time. It is full of penetrating analyses and of sound criticisms.-
--Saturday Review
-One of the finest qualities of this 'Preface to Morals' is a certain strain of literary self-conquest, wholly in keeping with the author's idea of asceticism, which saves the book from falling into the slough of cleverness, and gives it a lean literary vigor and sincerity.... This is a soundjand valuable book: honest, unafraid and austere.-
--Yale Review
