소개
리처드 호프스태터(Richard Hofstadter, 1916-1970)는 미국이 낳은 역사가이며, 지성인이다. 1964년 비소설분야에서 퓰리처상을 수여하였다. 호프스태터는 컬럼비아 대학교에서 드위트 클링턴 미국 역사학 교수로 재직하였다. 그는 초기에 공산주의 사상에 빠졌으나 후기에는 '합의 역사'로 사회주의, 자본주의로 양분하는 역사관을 비판하였다.
Richard Hofstadter was an American historian and public intellectual. Hofstadter was the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. Rejecting his earlier historical materialist approach to history, in the 1950s he came closer to the concept of "consensus history", and was epitomized by some of his admirers as the "iconic historian of postwar liberal consensus." Others see in his work an early critique of the one-dimensional society, since he was equally critical of socialist and capitalist models of society, and bemoaned the "consensus" within the society as "bounded by the horizons of property and entrepreneurship", criticizing the "hegemonic liberal capitalist culture running throughout the course of American history".