Max Lerner

Maxwell Alan Lerner was born on December 20, 1902, in Minsk, then in the Russian Empire, the son of Bessie (née Podel) and Benjamin Lerner. His Russian-Jewish family emigrated to the United States in 1907, where his father sold milk door to door. Lerner earned a B.A. from Yale University in 1923. He briefly studied law there before enrolling at Washington University in St. Louis, where he received an M.A. in 1925. He earned a Ph.D. from the Washington, D.C.–based Robert Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government (a progenitor of the Brookings Institution think tank that was academically affiliated with Washington University) in 1927.

• Illustration — Poster for a lecture by Max Lerner in Des Moines, Iowa, 1940 After receiving his doctorate, Lerner began work as an editor for the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1927–1932), The Nation (1936–1938), and PM (1943–1948). Following the sale of PM, he continued as a contributor to its short-lived successor, the New York Star, until its dissolution in 1949. His column for the New York Post debuted in 1949. It earned him a place on the master list of Nixon political opponents. During most of his career he was considered a liberal. In his later years, however, he was seen as something of a conservative since he expressed support for Margaret Thatcher and the Reagan administration. He taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Harvard University, Williams College, United States International University, the University of Notre Dame, and Brandeis University. Lerner also was a close friend of film star Elizabeth Taylor during her marriage to Eddie Fisher.

Lerner was a strong advocate of the New Deal. Lerner was a staunch opponent of discrimination against African Americans but supported the wartime Japanese American internment and backed an American Civil Liberties Union resolution on the issue to "subordinate civil liberties to wartime considerations and political loyalties." Lerner married Anita Marburg in 1928, and they divorced in 1940. He married Edna Albers in 1941. Lerner died on June 5, 1992. Lerner's granddaughter is actress Betsy Russell.

Lerner's most influential book was America as a Civilization: Life and Thought in the United States Today (1957). His book The Unfinished Country is a collection of more than 200 of his daily columns, which were written for the New York Post over the span of more than a decade. The book contains one of his better-known quotes: "The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt." His 1990 book, Wrestling with the Angel, was about his long struggle with illness.

• Max Lerner papers (MS 322). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. • Romano, C. America the Philosophical (2012). • Richard Severo, Max Lerner, Writer, 89, Is Dead; Humanist on Political Barricades, The New York Times, June 6, 1992 * *