authorDiscover the Best Books Written by Stephen C. Schlesinger
Stephen C. Schlesinger is an American historian, political commentator, and international affairs specialist. He is a Fellow at the Century Foundation in New York City. He served as director of the World Policy Institute at the New School University from 1997 to 2006. He was a foreign policy advisor to New York State Governor Mario Cuomo during his three terms in office.
Stephen Schlesinger was born on August 17, 1942. He is the son of the historian and presidential biographer Arthur Schlesinger Jr. His mother, Marian Schlesinger, was a writer and portrait artist. He attended Browne and Nichols School and Phillips Exeter Academy, graduating in 1960. He earned a BA from Harvard University in 1964 in American History and Literature, a one-year certificate of study from Peterhouse at Cambridge University in 1965, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1968.
The Schlesinger Library at Harvard is named after his paternal grandparents, Arthur, and Elizabeth Schlesinger. Schlesinger began as a freelance writer investigating the 1967 Algiers Motel murders in Detroit and covering the 1968 Czechoslovakia uprisings against the Soviet occupation. Later he served as special assistant to Edward Logue at the New York State Urban Development Corporation from 1968 to 1969.
The following year, he began publishing, with other former supporters of Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene J. McCarthy, The New Democrat, a monthly magazine dedicated to uniting "the left and radical wings" and replacing the "dead leadership" in the Democratic Party. The magazine was critical of Democratic National Committee chairman Larry O'Brien. It promoted the candidacy of South Dakota Senator George McGovern over that of Maine Senator Ed Muskie and former Vice President Hubert Humphrey during the 1972 Democratic presidential primaries.
Schlesinger became a columnist for The Boston Globe in 1974, writing the weekly "L't'ry Life" column about magazines and periodicals. From 1974 to 1978, he was a writer for Time Magazine in the Press Section and the National Affairs Section. In 1975, his book, The New Reformers, about the new political currents that grew out of the 1960s, was published. In 1978, he served as the chief political correspondent for The New York Post. In that same year, he wrote a piece for The Nation Magazine on the 1954 CIA coup in Guatemala which was a finalist for a National Magazine award.
In 1982, he and co-author Stephen Kinzer published Bitter Fruit, a much-acclaimed full-length account of the US intervention in Guatemala. Tony Blinken, Secretary of State in the Biden Administration, told Schlesinger that the book influenced President Bill Clinton to apologize to the people of Guatemala for US support of repressive military and intelligence forces in the country.
Schlesinger served as a speechwriter, liberal counselor, and foreign policy advisor to New York State Governor Mario Cuomo during his three terms in office. He accompanied Cuomo on his trip to the Soviet Union in 1987. In 1990, he became the Director of International Organizations for New York State. He also served on the Cuomo Commission on Competitiveness in 1992.
Schlesinger participated in election monitoring missions for National Democratic Institute (NDI), helping to oversee Bulgaria's first democratic election in 1990 after the fall of its Communist government; he participated in a second NDI mission in 1990 to monitor Guatemala's presidential election, and in 1993 he was an observer of Paraguay's presidential election as part of an NDI delegation led by former President Jimmy Carter.
