Walter Lippmann and the American Century

Ronald Lewis Steel (1931–2023), an American historian and author, is best known for his definitive biography Walter Lippmann and the American Century (1980), which earned the National Book Critics Circle Award, Bancroft Prize, and other honors. Born in Morris, Illinois, he graduated from Northwestern and Harvard, served in the U.S. Army and Foreign Service, worked as an editor and journalist in Europe and New York, and taught international relations and history at universities including USC, Yale, and Princeton.