Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. (b. October 15, 1917) is an American liberal political scientist and social critic whose work has focused on the philosophies and policies of U.S. presidents, including Andrew Jackson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Richard Nixon.
He served as the in-house historian of the John F. Kennedy administration. He was born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of Arthur M. Schlesinger (1888-1965), who was also a respected historian. Schlesinger is a prolific contributor to liberal theory and is a passionate and articulate voice for Kennedyism and the Great Society. He is admired for his wit, scholarship, and devotion to the liberal agenda, writing several books over the course of his career. He coined the term "imperial presidency" during the Nixon administration. He won a Pulitzer Prize in history for his 1945 book The Age of Jackson. His 1949 book The Vital Center is considered a landmark work of political analysis which made a case for the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, while harshly critical of both unregulated capitalism and of those liberals who advocated cooperation or sympathy with totalitarian ideologies such as communism. His 1986 book The Cycles of American History was an early work on the relationship of cyclical generations of politics in the United States, and influenced William Strauss and Neil Howe's later work in the area. He was a contributor to The National Experience, an American history textbook. He has written more recently about the erosion of common civic engagement brought about by multiculturalism, in the book The Disuniting of America (1991). Schlesinger's Ten Most Influential People of the Second Millennium list, from the 2000 World Almanac & Book of Facts.
