cover image THE GUARDIANS: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment

THE GUARDIANS: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment

Geoffrey Kabaservice, . . Holt, $30 (573pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-6762-0

As president of Yale in the 1960s, Kingman Brewster was able to avoid much of the violence that afflicted other campuses rocked by student protests. It was probably no coincidence that, three decades earlier, he was a prominent student protestor against the U.S. entering WWII. By the '60s, he was part of a loose-knit group of liberal patricians that included presidential advisers McGeorge Bundy and Cyrus Vance, New York City mayor John Lindsay and Episcopalian bishop Paul Moore. In his first book, Kabaservice (who has a B.A. and a Ph.D. from Yale) deftly traces the professional and personal connections linking these men who were born to privilege but had a "genuine wish to be of service to the nation," and reveals how they tried to invest government and academic power structures with the flexibility needed to cope with the social upheavals of Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement. Not only President Bush but John Kerry and Howard Dean attended Brewster's Yale, and Kabaservice's history offers valuable insights into a crucible that help shape their political character—not just through Brewster's actions, but through the powerful backlash from conservative alumni. The presentation is meticulous, and the considerable detail about the overhaul of Yale's undergraduate admissions process is crucial to understanding just how completely those changes reshaped the school's student body—by admitting not only more diverse but also smarter students. The story is further enlivened by frequent off-campus forays that reveal not only how the '60s affected Yale but how Yale affected the '60s. (Apr. 1)