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Early life, education and family Bruce Mazlish was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1923. His father, Louis Mazlish, had immigrated as a teenager from what was then Russia. A largely self-taught engineer and entrepreneur, Louis Mazlish started a laundry service for which he developed much of the equipment. He married Lee Reuben in 1919, and had three children, of whom Bruce was the middle, with an older brother, Robert, and a younger sister, Elaine. Bruce Mazlish attended local public primary schools in Brooklyn, and then elected to go to Boy's High School, which drew its students on a city-wide basis. Upon graduation he entered Columbia College in 1940. Having enlisted in the Officer's Reserve Corps, Mazlish was called up in 1943, and underwent basic training in the US infantry. Subsequently he served in the OSS, assigned to the Far East arena, in Morale Operations. When the war ended, Columbia College granted him a catch-up BA in 1944. He married Constance Shaw, a fellow member of the OSS, and then secured a job as a journalist at the Washington Daily News (now defunct). For most of his six or so months there he worked as a sports reporter, only at the end shifting to the city desk (on the way, he hoped, to becoming a foreign correspondent, a dream that was never fulfilled). His wife had majored in Spanish literature. Having promised her a honeymoon in Spain, they settled for next best and went to Mexico for a year, where he hoped to write the great American novel. Back in the USA, to earn some money Mazlish took a teaching job at a third-rate prep school. Here he taught English, for which he was well qualified, and also History which he acquired in the time-honored fashion by staying one step ahead of his students, studying to 4:00 AM. In this manner, he acquired an original view of the discipline of history. And thus he stumbled onto the path of the academic world. Post-WW II was a time of educational expansion, thanks to the GI Bill of Rights, and the relative scarcity of teachers, Mazlish and his wife got jobs teaching at the University of Maine, Brunswick campus. After two years of teaching a heavy load of history (18 contact hours the first semester, then reduced to 15), he realized the need for an advanced degree. Columbia University offered him credits that allowed him to take a MA in literature (his thesis was on “Defoe: Criminologist,” 1947) and then a Ph.D in Modern European History, where he worked mainly under Professors Shepherd Clough and Jacques Barzun (thesis on “Burke, Bonald and De Maistre: A Study in Conservative Thought”, 1955). Mazlish married three times, the first to Constance Shaw, the second to Anne Austin, and the third to Neva Goodwin, an economist and co-director of the Institute for Global Development And Environment at Tufts University. He had two children from his first marriage, Cordelia and Peter Shaw, and two from his second, Anthony and Jared. In 1955 Mazlish was hired as in instructor at MIT. He became full Professor in the History Department in 1965. Aside from some years abroad, he remained in active teaching at MIT until academic year 2004, when he assumed emeritus status. Some of his notable course offerings included “Marx, Darwin and Freud”, “Modernity, Post-modernity and Capitalism”, and “The New Global History”. From 1974-1980 he served as Chair of MIT’s Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. At this time, there were 11 “sections” representing their disciplines (this amounted to about 140 faculty), an unwieldy administrative structure. When Mazlish stepped down after 5 years of service, he recommended that each section became an autonomous department; this occurred a few years later.

Books and themes A major theme in Mazlish’s research and thinking has been an examination of the lenses by which we look at past human experiences – i.e., the lenses through which history is constructed. This theme included probing the use of psychoanalysis and of sociology as applied to history, along with explorations into the philosophy of history. These interests, enfolded within the rubric of historiography, have carried through virtually all of Mazlish’s work. In addition to the books cited below, he pursued this interest through deep involvement with two journals. In 1960 he was a founding editor of History and Theory, helping to edit it for ten years. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, helping to secure its financial and institutional footing, and continuing to serve on its Board of Advisors since its founding in 1969.

The History of Science and Technology Another theme has been the history of science and technology and their interaction with other elements in society. The Western Intellectual Tradition (Harper Bros, 1960; paper 1962), Mazlish’s first book, written in collaboration with J. Bronowski, had the aim of bridging the divide between the humanities and the sciences – the “two cultures,” as named by C.P. Snow1. (The book was enthusiastically reviewed by Snow2, as well as by J. Plumb3). The goal – to present an integrated history, fusing the insights of the humanities and the sciences – has been appreciated by generations of students, teachers and others over the course of more than half a century, while it has remained consistently in print, with translations in Italian, Spanish and Japanese. It was also issued in a British edition, and was made a Book Find Club Selection. While The Western Intellectual Tradition has had an enduring life within academia, in history classes as well as other areas of study, many of Mazlish’s other books have found an enthusiastic readership outside of his own discipline. This can be said, for example, of The Railroad and the Space Program: An Exploration in Historical Analogy, edited by Mazlish, (MIT, 1965), whose 52 page introduction by him has become a classic. As indicated by the book’s subtitle, this is an in-depth exploration of historical analogy. Mazlish's next book was The Riddle of History: The Great Speculators from Vico to Freud (Harper & Row, 1966). Here, pursuing his historiographic interests, furthered by his work with the journal History and Theory, he sought to look at philosophy of history in terms of both analytic and speculative attempts, while raising the question as to what effect the great thinkers in this area had on ordinary historical pursuits and on efforts to construct the social sciences. In A New Science: The Breakdown of Connections and the Birth of Sociology (Oxford, 1989, paper Penn State U. Press, 1993), the effort was to combine the perspective of the humanities with that of social science. Welcomed by a number of distinguished sociologists as an original contribution, it has received less attention by historians. Mazlish returned to the two cultures with The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-Evolution of Humans and Machines (Yale, 1993; paper 1995). Translated into Spanish, German, Japanese, Italian, and Korean, also co-winner of the Kayden National Book Award, this book has been hailed by many in the fields of history of science and technology as well as artificial intelligence. It brings a historical perspective to the troubled relations – hopes and fears – between humans and their mechanical creations.

47 years after Mazlish and Bronowski fused the so-called “two cultures” in their book, The Western Intellectual Tradition, Mazlish returned to delve into a third “culture” as he refers to it: that of the social sciences.

In The Uncertain Sciences (Yale, 1998; paper Transaction Press, 2007), Mazlish explored what kind of knowledge the human sciences, including history, can claim to offer: is such knowledge “scientific” and what do we mean by “scientific” in this context? The range required to answer this large question was made possible because all of Mazlish's other books were, in one way or another, preparatory studies for this work.

Psychohistory In December 1957 the eminent diplomatic historian William Langer delivered his Presidential address to the American History Association with the title “The Next Assignment,” declaring that if he were a young historian starting all over he would work at the frontiers of history and psychology. Most of his fellow historians scoffed at the idea. In the very next year, Erik Erikson's Young Man Luther appeared (not reviewed in the American History Review). Given his interest in the lenses by which we look at history, Mazlish became interested in what became to be called psychohistory. As part of his exploration into the field he edited an anthology with the title Psychoanalysis and History (Prentice-Hall, 1963; revised ed., Grosset and Dunlap, 1971). Mazlish wrote the introduction for this book, combining his interest in philosophy of history with his new interest in psychoanalysis. Seen as a pioneer in the field he had to try to do what all pioneers do, i.e., stay ahead of the wagons behind. His first endeavor in this direction appeared in the book, In Search of Nixon: A Psychohistorical Study (Basic Books, 1972; Penguin ed. 1973). Here Mazlish attempted to see how far such an effort could be taken by relying simply on existing published records. Appearing at the time of the Watergate hearings, it received wide popular attention and acclaim, and was also published in Japanese and Dutch translations. In Kissinger. The European Mind in American Policy (Basic Books, 1976; followed by a French translation) he attempted to push this methodological inquiry by employing a much wider array of materials, including interviews and other oral history accounts. James and John Stuart Mill. Father and Son in the 19th Century was published by Basic Books in 1975 and in a paperback edition by Transactions Press, 1988. This was substantively the most important of his efforts to explore the new sub-field of psychohistory. Its declared aim was to join intellectual and psychoanalytic inquiries. Many of Mazlish’s essays in psychohistory were collected in The Leader, the Led, and the Psyche (Wesleyan U. Press, 1990), where he pushed on from individual psychology to collective psychology in historical studies.

Revolution In parallel with his interest in psychoanalytical theory, Mazlish had been pursuing an interest in revolutions since his graduate school days, eventuating in the publication of various articles including “The French Revolution in Comparative Perspective” (PSQ, 1970); “American Revolutionary Leadership: The Psychological Dimension”, delivered at Library of Congress Symposium and published in Leadership in the American Revolution (1974), and after a six week crash course in Middle East and Islamic history, “The Hidden Khomeini,” a psychiatric profile of the Iranian and Islamic leader. In 1971 he co-edited a reader called Revolution (Macmillan). With The Revolutionary Ascetic (Basic Books, 1976, paperback 1977), Mazlish sought to bring together the uses of psychology with revolutionary studies. Combining theories from both, Freud and Max Weber, Mazlish inquired into the functions served by asceticism in regard to revolutionary leaders.

Globalization and Humanity Starting in the late 1980s, and taking off from the two-year “Global Issues” seminar series at Boston University, run by his wife, Neva Goodwin, Mazlish began to explore post-WWII globalization from an historical and interdisciplinary perspective. Out of this endeavor came, among other things, The New Global History Initiative which has mounted a number of international conferences. The first was held in Bellagio, Italy, in 1991, generating the volume Conceptualizing Global History, ed. by Bruce Mazlish & Ralph Buultjens; the Introduction was written by the lead editor. Published by Westview Press in 1993, the volume serves as the first in a series, subsequently published by The New Global History Press (with many of the following volumes co-edited by Mazlish). For details on the first and subsequent conferences and volumes see the web site www.newglobalhistory.org. Other writings in this area are The Global History Reader (Routledge, 2005), ed. by Mazlish and Akira Iriye (this book resulted from a course co-taught at Harvard by the two editors), and The New Global History (Routledge, 2006). Related to these works is Civilization and Its Contents (Stanford, 2004), as well as writings on world history, such as the chapter “Terms” in the Palgrave Advances in World Histories, ed. Marnie Hughes-Warrington (Palgrave 2005). Mazlish’s work on globalization led him to inquire into the “concept of Humanity.” In his book The Idea of Humanity in a Global Era (Palgrave 2009) Mazlish brings together his inquiries into globalization and the concept of Humanity. He sees it as a concept that, in its modern, reified form, emerged from the Nuremberg trials and prosecution of what came to be called “crimes against humanity”; to name such crimes raised, but did not answer, the question of what Humanity is. Mazlish considers what he calls the “Judicial Revolution,” begun by the Nuremberg trials, as the starting point to helping humanity perceive itself as Humanity – an entity that has rights and that can, in a sense, be an actor. Indeed, via the Internet, Humanity can take the form of a virtual community across the globe. . In his late 80s, after a successful operation for hydrocephalus, Mazlish has worked to build on his ideas in a more activist, “public intellectual” manner, mainly through the writing and posting of blogs (http://bmazlish.blog.com) which seek overtly to combine scholarship with moral and political concerns.

Awards and honors: other writings and activities In 1972-73 Mazlish was a recipient of a Social Science Research Council Faculty Fellowship and made a Visiting Member of the Institute for Advanced Study. In 1967 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1987 he was awarded the Toynbee Prize, an international award in social science (the next awardee was George Kennan, followed among others by Ralf Dahrendorf, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Albert Hirschman). In addition to his writing and teaching, Mazlish has served on the Board of Trustees of the Toynbee Prize Foundation, 1992-2007 (serving as President from 1997-2006), on the Scholars Council for the Kluge Prize of the Library of Congress, 2000-2003, and on the governing board of the Rockefeller Archives Center, 1999-2005. Major articles and reviews by Mazlish have appeared in such journals as the AHA, Daedalus, J. of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, History of European Ideas, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Nation, Encounter, J. of Contemporary History, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, New York Times Book Review, and many others. Invited lectures have included the Remsen Bird Honorary Lecture at Occidental College, the Presidential Lecture at Brown University, along with innumerable others in the United States and abroad, including in Argentina, India, Great Britain, and Russia.