I am persistently interested in examples of intellectual history that relate to political history, or more specifically, that demonstrate explicit influence over policy. This is not to say that intellectual history needs such a rationale: intellectual life helps us explain a given historical context, with or without explicit reference to its political influence. But my interests tend to gravitate towards intellectual history’s relation to politics, or what might be called “intellectual history in action” (with a nod towards Kevin Mattson, author of Intellectuals in Action, about early New Left intellectuals, including C. Wright Mills and William Appleman Williams.) Alice O’Connor’s Read more