Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary

Daniel Patrick Moynihan described in the Economist as "a philosopher-Politician-diplomat who two centuries earlier would not have been out of place among the Founding Fathers," never wrote an autobiography. But he was a gifted author and voluminous correspondent, and in this selection from his letters Steven Weisman has compiled a vivid portrait of Moynihan's life, in his own words.

Before his four terms as senator from New York, Moynihan was a pathfinder in John F.Kennedy's New Frontier, a commander in Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty and Great Society, and was embroiled in many greater and lesser moments of Richard Nixon's administration. He was a renowned professor at Harvard well before becoming a successful politician. He was an outspoken envoy and challenger of shibboleths and of anti-Semitism while serving as ambassador to India and the United Nations.

Above all, Moynihan was the originator of powerful ideas that were also powerfully argued-ideas that actually helped transform how Americans think about their country. His writing entertains us with his wit and sparkle, his foibles and feuds, but it bears a lasting relevance because of Moynihan's clarity, understanding and farsightedness toward the intractable questions and cultural conflicts with which the nation struggles today. For a politician to embrace this kind of long-term thinking-on such enduring issues as health care, welfare, the federal budget, the uses and misuses of intelligence, national defense, global ethnic and sectarian conflict, race, and family strains-is extraordinary, even unique.

Steven R. Weisman is editorial director and public policy fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which he joined in 2008 after serving as a correspondent, editor, and editorial writer at the New York Times, based in New York, Washington, India, and Japan. He won the Edward Weintal Prize from Georgetown University for his diplomatic reporting in 2004. His book The Great Tax Wars: How the Income Tax Transformed the Nation received the Sidney Hillman Award in 2003.