December 20, 1902

Britannica gives us the big picture of Sidney Hook (December 20, 1902 to July 12, 1989).

'Sidney Hook, .... American educator and social philosopher who studied historical theory in relation to American philosophy. He was among the first U.S. scholars to analyze Marxism and was firmly opposed to all forms of totalitarianism, holding liberal democracy as the most viable political structure for social and scientific advancement.

After receiving a doctorate from Columbia University (1927) with John Dewey as his mentor, Hook taught at New York University (1927–69) until he retired to become senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University (1973–89). An exponent of pragmatism, secularism, and rationalism, he advocated a general philosophy of personal development. He wrote and edited more than 35 books including Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx: A Revolutionary Interpretation (1933), The Hero in History (1943), Education for Modern Man (1946...), In Defense of Academic Freedom (1971), ...[among others]. His autobiography, Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century, was published in 1987.'

Hook's most famous book is probaby The Hero in History in which he weighs reactions to Carlye, and categorizes 19th century approaches to the individual and society. Hook specifies, mainly, that the hero may arise, but is a product himself of determining forces, and, were a specific figure not realized, an other would arise to fill the need.

We conclude with a little picture in the life of Sidney Hook, a vignette of New York literary society in the 1940s, recounted in the biography, Jean Stafford: The Savage Heart, (Charlotte Margolis Goodman, 2013).

Our glimpse is of a party hosted by the Sidney Hooks', in the 1940s, a gathering of what Jean Stafford labeled "bright New York literary Jews." Hook remembered this evening because his wife screamed at him across the busy room, to stop talking to that woman, -- that is,to Stafford, who had voiced sympathy for Franco and was there with her husband Robert Lowell.

Hook would recall Stafford's "kittenish quality" and that she persisted in arguing about Augustine; Hook mentioned that the Partisan Review crowd considered she had a promising talent, though he himself suspected they were "like tomcats on the prowl" since Stafford was young and pretty. Stafford would decades later (1970) win a Pulitzer Prize.