When or Why a Biography Won't Work: My Encounter With James Bryant Conant

• In Event: 49.054 - Research Stages in Historical and Biographical Inquiry

Abstract

This paper describes the reasons behind my decision not to do a full biography of James Bryant Conant, but, instead, to do a study of his impact on educational policy. Reasons for this decision have to do with 1) Conant's own reticence to expose himself to biographers, 2) the inadequacy of the existing biography by James Hershberg as a biography, 3) the refusal of the Conant family to open up his personal papers through copying, and 4) my own frustration at the negative impact of numbers 1, 2, and 3 to my planned biography.

Author

• Wayne Urban, The University of Alabama