Review Essay: Arnold H. Price, My Twentieth Century. Recollections of a Public Historian

Authors

Leo Schelbert, University of Illinois at Chicago

Keywords

Arnold Price, historians, Swiss Americans

Abstract

This autobiographical account of a twentieth century life, moving into the twenty-first, is as captivating as it is instructive. Arnold H. Price, who for years served the Swiss American Historical Society as secretary and also generously assisted scholars such as Heinz K. Meier in their research on the relations between the United States and Switzerland-a Friendship under Stress, as H.K. Meier's study is aptly titled-features in this memoir his formative years in Bonn, Kiel and Ann Arbor, Michigan as well as his professional career in Washington, D.C. There he worked first in the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, from 1942 to 1945, then with some brief interruptions in the intelligence section of the Department of State until 1960. Next he took a position at the Library of Congress until 1979 and from 1980 to 1991 he worked as a bibliographer for the American Historical Association. His account is that of a historian, that is of some one who is fascinated by the human past and the long shadow it casts over the present and the future.

Recommended Citation

Schelbert, Leo (2003) "Review Essay: Arnold H. Price, My Twentieth Century. Recollections of a Public Historian," Swiss American Historical Society Review: Vol. 39: No. 3, Article 4.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol39/iss3/4