Nonfiction work

By: Walter Lippmann

Date: 1914

Source: Lippmann, Walter. Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest. New York: Mitchell Kennerly, 1914, 121–148. Reprinted in Shannon, David A., ed. Progressivism and Postwar Disillusionment: 1898–1928. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966, 104–112.

About the Author: Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) was just twenty-five when he published Drift and Mastery, an inspired and wide-ranging critique of the American political tradition. A Harvard graduate whose major influences ranged from the philosophers William James and George Santayana to the socialist Graham Wallas and the muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens, Lippmann soon emerged as one of the nation's preeminent public intellectuals. Drift and Mastery captures the young philosopher-journalist at his most earnest, revealing the sort of...