Crown Fellows: History That Matters

“The professors at Brandeis who mentored me were all historians who wrote for the general public. They understood that a historian’s role was not just to write for other historians, but to reach a much larger audience.”

From the moment he arrived at the a dissertation topic — U.S. Sen. Joseph Crown School from Cornell, David McCarthy and the American labor Oshinsky was taught to bring history to movement — that he understood would life in a way that would appeal to large have wide appeal. After graduation, the numbers of educated readers. dissertation served as a foundation for his His mentors — Leonard Levy, John award-winning biography of the controDemos, Morton Keller, John Roche and versial politician, A Conspiracy So Immense: David Hackett Fischer, the university’s The World of Joe McCarthy.

Earl Warren Professor of History and Oshinsky recalls Levy laboriously still a member of the Brandeis faculty — editing his work line by line to help were prodigious researchers, disciplined the Crown Fellow create the narrative historians and gifted writers. thread necessary to tell the story in a “I learned the importance of conduct- compelling manner. ing my research and talking about impor“It was amazing to have a historian of tant historical ideas, but the Brandeis his stature editing my work in that way,” faculty all stressed the need to put my Oshinsky says. “Virtually everyone who work into a narrative form that would taught me at Brandeis was a talented appeal to an educated reader who was not writer and a wonderful stylist. They had a historian,” Oshinsky says. “They were an immense impact on my career.” all masters of the grand narrative — telling the big story in a big way that was character-driven.” Oshinsky settled on