Lippmann's Influence

Walter Lippmann is generally considered to be the most important, most popular, and most widely influential political journalist of the twentieth century.

Clinton Rossiter and James Lare, in The Essential Lippmann, consider him "perhaps the most important American political thinker of the twentieth century" and "a major contributor to the American way of life and thought." D. Steven Blum, in Walter Lippmann, asserts that Lippmann is "the century's foremost political journalist" and "the preeminent chronicler of the political events of the age." Ronald Steel, in Walter Lippmann and the American Century, asserts that Lippmann "was without a doubt the nation's greatest journalist."

In addition to his critical acclaim, Lippmann's books of political philosophy and regular newspaper and magazine columns were extraordinarily popular. Marquis Childs, in Walter Lippmann and His Times, describes Lippmann as "a critic who, more than any other American today, has achieved...