cover image Gentlemen Rebel CL

Gentlemen Rebel CL

H. Stuart Hughes. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), $24.95 (326pp) ISBN 978-0-395-56316-8

In an urbane, wryly self-deprecating autobiography, 74-year-old Harvard historian Hughes recounts a life that has straddled the worlds of politics and academia and genteel society. This grandson of a U.S. chief justice gathered political intelligence in Algiers and Italy during WW II. As a State Department official, he had a ringside seat as the Cold War was taking shape in 1945-1947. He battled with zealous Washington Cold Warriors, and did preliminary studies for what later became the Marshall Plan. After an unsuccessful bid for a U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts in 1962, he became an activist, campaigning for disarmament and women's rights, and against the Vietnam War. These crystal-clear yet emotionally reticent recollections do not fully explain why his first marriage to a French Calvinist failed. Hughes is on firmer ground when recalling friendships with Edmund Wilson, Herbert Marcuse, historians Richard Pipes and Richard Hofstadter. Photos. (Nov.)