American journalist (1903?1995)
John Rensselaer Chamberlain
(October 28, 1903 ? April 9, 1995) was an American
journalist
, business and economic
historian
, syndicated columnist, and literary critic who was dubbed "one of America's most trusted book reviewers" by the
libertarian
magazine
The Freeman
.
[2]
Early life
[
edit
]
Born in
New Haven, Connecticut
in 1903, John Chamberlain attended the
Loomis Institute
in Windsor, Connecticut,
[3]
and graduated from
Yale University
in 1925,
[4]
where he was chairman of the campus humor magazine
The Yale Record
.
[5]
He began his career in journalism at the
New York Times
in 1926, serving there as both an
editor
and book reviewer during the 1930s.
[4]
Later, he worked on the staff at
Scribner's
and
Harper's
magazines.
[2]
Serving on the editorial staffs of
Fortune
(1936?1941) and
Life
(1941?1950),
[4]
for a time he wrote the
editorials
for
Life
under the direction of
Henry Luce
, the founder of
Time, Inc.
Chamberlain was a member of the
Dewey Commission
and a contributor to
Not Guilty: the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made Against
Leon Trotsky
in the
Moscow Trials
(1938) by
John Dewey
. For most of this period, Chamberlain was, in his own words, "a New York literary liberal" involved in political causes of the Left.
[6]
He also taught
journalism
at the
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
, where his students included the noted journalists
Marguerite Higgins
,
Elie Abel
and
Edith Efron
.
[7]
Changing political beliefs
[
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]
There is nothing like a fact to kill a theory.
John Chamberlain
In 1939, Chamberlain was among the "editorial sponsors" of the Writer's Anti-War Bureau that was formed by an informal group of journalists and publicists under the leadership of
America First Committee
publicity director Sidney Hertzberg. The Bureau publicized a weekly newssheet entitled
Uncensored
, which worked to analyze the news, expose the propaganda and hidden biases of those who advocated for
foreign intervention
. The newssheet appeared weekly from October 7, 1939 until its final issue in December 7, 1941.
[8]
In the early 1940s, Chamberlain moved to the intellectual Right, along with friends such as former
communists
Whittaker Chambers
and
John Dos Passos
, although Chamberlain was never himself a
communist
.
[9]
Influenced by
Albert Jay Nock
, he credits the writers
Ayn Rand
,
Isabel Paterson
and
Rose Wilder Lane
with his final "conversion" to what he called "an older American philosophy" of
libertarian
and
conservative
ideas.
[10]
Along with his friends
Henry Hazlitt
and
Max Eastman
, he helped to promote the work of the Austrian economist
F. A. Hayek
,
The Road to Serfdom
, writing the "Foreword" to the first American edition of the book in 1944.
In 1946,
Leonard Read
of the
Foundation for Economic Education
established a free market magazine named
The Freeman
, reviving the name of a publication which had been edited by
Albert J. Nock
(1920?1924). Its first editors included Chamberlain, Hazlitt and
Suzanne La Follette
, and its contributors during Chamberlain's tenure there included
James Burnham
, John Dos Passos, Max Eastman,
Frank Meyer
,
Raymond Moley
,
Morrie Ryskind
, and the
Austrian School
economists
Ludwig von Mises
and F. A. Hayek.
[11]
He joined the
neoliberal
Mont Pelerin Society
during this period. After stepping down as editor of
The Freeman
, Chamberlain continued his regular column for the periodical, "A Reviewer's Notebook."
From 1950 to 1960, he was an editorial writer for
The Wall Street Journal
.
[12]
William F. Buckley Jr.
credited Chamberlain with "changing the course of his life" by writing the "Introduction" to Buckley's first book,
God and Man at Yale
.
[13]
Later, Chamberlain became a lifelong contributing editor for Buckley's magazine,
National Review
, from its founding until his death. He still occasionally differed from Buckley; for example, he praised
Atlas Shrugged
by
Ayn Rand
.
[14]
For more than twenty-five years, he wrote a syndicated column for
King Features
which appeared in newspapers across the US.
[4]
After his first wife died in 1954, he married Ernestine Stodelle, who had previously been married to the Russian theatrical director
Theodore Komisarjevsky
.
[15]
Books
[
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]
- Farewell to Reform, Being a History of the Rise, Life and Decay of the Progressive Mind in America
(1932)
- The American Stakes
(1940)
- The Roots of Capitalism
(1959)
- The Enterprising Americans: a Business History of the United States'
(Harper & Row, 1963)
- The National Review Reader
- Freedom and Independence: The Hillsdale Story
(1979)
- A Life With the Printed Word
(Regnery, 1982)
- The Turnabout Years
(Jameson, 1991)
[4]
References
[
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]
- ^
Kauffman, Bill, "Reason Interview with John Chamberlain,"
Reason
, March 1987,
https://reason.com/1987/03/01/reason-interview-with-john-cha/
- ^
a
b
Opitz, Edmund A., "A Reviewer Remembered: John Chamberlain 1903?1995,"
The Freeman
, June, 1995, vol. 45, iss. 6.
- ^
Carnes, Mark C. (2005).
American National Biography: Supplement 2
. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 84?85.
ISBN
978-0195222029
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
"John Chamberlain, Columnist, Dies at 91"
.
New York Times
. 1995-04-13
. Retrieved
25 August
2014
.
- ^
Carnes, Marc C., ed. (2005)
American National Biography: Supplement 2
. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 84.
- ^
Chamberlain,
A Life With the Printed Word
, p. 65.
- ^
Chamberlain, pp. 93?94.
- ^
https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/archivalcollections/pdf/uncensored.pdf
[
bare URL PDF
]
- ^
Diggins,
Up From Communism
.
- ^
Chamberlain, p. 136.
- ^
Chamberlain, p. 138; Hamilton, Charles H., "
The Freeman
: the Early Years,"
The Freeman
, Dec. 1984, vol. 34, issue 12.
- ^
Chamberlain, pp. 72?173 [136?139].
- ^
Chamberlain, p. 147.
- ^
Chamberlain, pp. 149?150.
- ^
Beach, Randall (2011-10-31).
"Komisarjevsky's Father Testifies During Penalty Phase"
. Litchfield County Times
. Retrieved
25 August
2014
.
Sources
[
edit
]
- Chamberlain, John (1982).
A Life With the Printed Word
. Chicago:
Regnery Gateway
. p. 147.
ISBN
0895266563
.
- Diggins, John P.,
Up From Communism
, Harper & Row, 1975.
- Kauffman, Bill, "Reason Interview with John Chamberlain,"
Reason
, March 1987,
[1]
(retrieved 1-25-23).
- Opitz, Edmund A., "A Reviewer Remembered: John Chamberlain 1903?1995,"
The Freeman
, June, 1995
[2]
(retrieved 4-12-09).
- The New York Times
, "John Chamberlain, Columnist, Dies at 91," April 13, 1995
[3]
(retrieved 4-12-09).
- Mark Christopher Carnes, Paul R. Betz ?
American National Biography: Supplement
External links
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