Nicholas Miraculous - by Michael Rosenthal (Paperback)

About the Book

An engrossing biography of a major American figure who skirmished with many of the twentieth-century's leading philanthropists, statesmen, and educators.

Book Synopsis

To those who loved him, like Teddy Roosevelt, he was "Nicholas Miraculous," the fabled educator who had a hand in everything; to those who did not, like Upton Sinclair, he was "the intellectual leader of the American plutocracy," a champion of "false and cruel ideals." Ezra Pound branded him "one of the more loathsome figures" of the age. Whether celebrated or despised, Nicholas Murray Butler (1862-1947) was undeniably an irresistible force who helped shape American history.

With wit and irony, Michael Rosenthal traces Butler's rise to prominence as president of Columbia University, which he presided over for forty-four years and developed into one of the world's most distinguished institutions of research and teaching. Butler also won the Nobel Peace Prize and headed both the Carnegie Endowment and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among innumerable other organizations. In 1920, he sought the Republican nomination for president, managing to garner more votes on the first ballot than the eventual winner, Warren Harding. Rosenthal's richly detailed, elegantly crafted narrative captures the mania and genius that propelled Butler to these extraordinary achievements and more. Thick with social, cultural, and political history, Nicholas Miraculous recreates Butler's prodigious career and the dynamic age that nourished him.

Review Quotes

[A] vividly written and meticulously researched biography.... A must for those concerned with the development of college and university education from its dry days in the nineteenth century to its bristling status today.--Louis Auchincloss "Bookforum "

Michael Rosenthal's graceful, insightful narrative gift, which is a considerable one, is his ability to explain, as a cautionary tale, how this supremely self-confident, insufferable, immensely talented man transformed Columbia into an internationally renowned research university, while achieving worldwide adulation and acclaim, only to disappear into historical oblivion a short time after his death.--Eugene M. Tobin"Journal of American History" (01/01/0001)

About the Author

Michael Rosenthal was associate dean of Columbia College for seventeen years, later becoming, as a member of the English Department, the first holder of the Roberta and William Campbell Professorship of the Humanities at Columbia University. His books include Virginia Woolf and The Character Factory: Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts and the Imperatives of Empire.