Forrest McDonald: Out with His Memoirs

Scott Morris, in the WSJ (Aug. 12, 2004):

Arguably the most influential work of American history is Charles A. Beard's"An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States," published in 1913. Beard's thesis--that our country was born of base economic self-interest and not idealism--became Holy Writ for many historians and social thinkers, launching a quasi-Marxist critique of the entire American project that persists, in certain corners of the academy, to this day.

If the critique has lost its force--and, luckily, it has--much of the credit belongs to Forrest McDonald, the historian who first took on Beard's analysis. He has now written"Recovering the Past," a bright memoir that illuminates the craft of the historian and provides a spirited account of Mr. McDonald's long-running battle against the unthinking leftist bias that plagues his profession.

A small-town boy, Mr. McDonald attended the University of Texas, where he caught fire intellectually. At 21, he produced a 272-page master's thesis on Beard's"Economic Interpretation," the scope of which amazed his professors. Mr. McDonald now believes this youthful work to be"stunningly puerile," but the audacity of it, combined with Mr. McDonald's careful research, would become the hallmarks of his career....