WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS. — After more than 20 books, a Pulitzer Prize and many other honors for his work on the executive and legislative branches of government, 89-year-old historian James MacGregor Burns is ready for a new subject.
"I'm working on the politics of the Supreme Court," he says, seated in a small armchair in his converted farmhouse, a sunny, cluttered, book-filled loft just down the road and up the hill from Williams College, where he studied as an undergraduate and later taught for decades.
"I felt I had treated presidents and Congresses a lot, and here was this other branch I didn't know that much about. I had a feeling it would be even more political than I expected, and it is."
He is white-haired and wide-eyed, an ever curious scholar dressed smartly in khakis and a striped shirt for this afternoon interview. Although clearly slowed by age, he remains active enough that when his car broke down in town earlier in the day, he walked back home, uphill, for more than a mile.
First published nearly 60 years ago, Burns is a longtime expert on presidential leadership and leadership in general. He has written often about the "transformational" leader, one with the vision to change the world, and the "transactional" leader, one who knows how to negotiate and compromise. His 1978 text, "Leadership," is widely studied by business and political science majors, while his two-volume biography of Franklin Roosevelt is a model for books on the late president.
"Anybody who's going to write about leadership and presidential authority would want to consult his books," says Robert Dallek, author of "Nixon and Kissinger" and biographies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
"He's an important scholar and also extremely accessible," says Geoffrey C. Ward, whose books include the acclaimed FDR biography, "A First-Class Temperament," and the companion texts to Ken Burns' documentaries on jazz, baseball, the Civil War and World War II.
"He knows how to tell a story and put you in a scene and make you want to know what happens next. In addition to being a political scientist, he's a wonderful storyteller, and that's quite unusual."
Burns' books also include a three-volume set on American history, "The American Experiment"; a critique of the Clinton administration, "Dead Center"; a biography of George Washington written with his companion and fellow historian, Susan Dunn; and a survey of presidents over the last four decades, "Running Alone."
