Biography

Lippmann was educated at Harvard where he studied philosophy, political science, and economics. While at Harvard he became a socialist and co-founded the Harvard Socialist Club. His first work, Drift and Mastery (1914) was a brilliant analysis of society, power, and humanism. By that point he had rejected socialism, later joking that he would have been forced to part with it by manners alone.

He co-founded the political weekly the New Republic (1914-17) and worked there until being appointed Assistant Secretary of War in 1917. Lippmann worked with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson drafting his famous Fourteen Points for peace at the close of WWI and the covenant for the League of Nations.

From 1921 to 1931 he worked on the editorial staff of the New York World, becoming editor in 1929. The cautionary exploration Public Opinion (1922) was the seminal work of the fledgling public relations industry, and is still taught in many colleges today.

In 1931 he began writing Today and Tomorrow, a column in the New York Herald Tribune that would come to be syndicated in 250 newspapers around the world. The column moved to the Washington Post in 1962, the same year that he won the Pulitzer for International Reporting, and ran until 1967. In his career, Lippmann endorsed six Republican and seven Democratic presidential candidates.

An early supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, Lippmann became disillusioned and condemned collectivism in The Good Society (1937).

Lippmann had great hopes for the social sciences to cultivate our better natures. He termed his suggestion Free Collectivism, although it would now be referred to as Cooperative Individualism. All but one of his works (Public Opinion), and all collections, are out of print (except here, of course).

Other Resources

AFAIK, you've found the most comprehensive source of Lippmann's works on the Net. His best works are in the public domain and beyond copyright. There are a few other sources of info on Lippmann.

the CSPAN American Writers series
Schoolnet ; a short biography
short bio from The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th edition
Review of Today: Conversations With Walter Lippmannin the New York Review of Books (subscription required for full access)

PodMonkeyX

Biography

Other Resources