Randolph Bourne

(1886 - 1918)

Born in Bloomfield, New Jersey, Randolph Bourne became a regular contributor to The Atlantic Monthly while studying at Columbia University; his 1913 book Youth and Life collects those columns. He became well known during World War I for his criticism of America’s interventionist foreign policy and of pro-war progressives, including his former professor John Dewey. Bourne died in December 1918 during the influenza epidemic; in an obituary Floyd Dell praised his “mood of perpetual inquiry, and the courage to go down unfamiliar ways in search of truth.”