![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Thompson, a member of the Communist Party Historians' Group between 1946–1956, left the party in 1956, but retained his passionate commitment to expanding Marxist analysis. Thompson and Hofstadter were both drawn to history by what the latter described as a "sense of engagement with contemporary problems" (1). But many of Hofstadter's best writings were lumped together rather unfairly by the 1970s generation with the "consensus school," a self-congratulatory genre of historical cheerleading associated most notably with Daniel Boorstin, who celebrated the "genius" of American politics those younger scholars dismissed. Thompson's work remained a "must read," passing from hand to hand among a generation of New Left historians in the United States. Both turned to social science for new theoretical perspectives: Thompson to anthropology, Hofstadter to sociology and psychology. Each struggled to move beyond the deterministic frameworks of orthodox Marxism by exploring the relationship of socio-economic factors to culture. Both men had a profound impact on the writing of history. Brown ranks in intellectual significance in the United States with Charles Beard, won a second Pulitzer Prize for his iconoclastic Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Thompson published The Making of the English Working Class, Richard Hofstadter, whom biographer David S. ![]()
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