American historian Carl Lotus Becker (1873-1945) was a proponent of the doctrine of historical relativism. He is best known for his book "The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers." Carl Becker was born on a farm near Waterloo, lowa, on...

Carl Becker was a historian of history as well as a historian of the United States, and his place in American history rests as much on his capacity to raise provocative questions about the nature of historical study as on the history he produced. He...

In his introduction to Freedom and Responsibility in the American Way of Life, Sabine notes that Becker consistently questioned democracy, aiming for an "idealism without illusions and a realism without cynicism. '

In the following essay, Smith shows Becker to have been a writer whose concerns were as much literary as they were historical and philosophical.

In the following essay, McNeill presents a personal view of Becker as a teacher and historian.