by Nomad
Most of you have probably never heard of Vernon Parrington. I know I hadn't until I stumbled upon an interesting quote. That's pretty remarkable because, in our grandparent's time, historian Parrington occupied a special place, particularly among the progressive-minded.The Parrington Question
This Midwestern educator was also the author of the three-volume Main Currents in American Thought (1927) which went on to win the 1928 Pulitzer Prize for History As his biography reminds us, for two decades this historical examination and analysis was one of the most influential books for American historians.Progressive history was a set of related assumptions and attitudes, which inspired the first great flowering of professional American scholarship in history...His progressive interpretation of American history was highly influential in the 1920s and 1930s and helped define modern liberalism in the United States. After receiving overwhelming praise and exerting enormous influence among intellectuals in the 1930s and 1940s, Parrington's ideas fell out of fashion before 1950.
