Drift and Mastery
Walter Lippman
Sep 2025 · Penguin Random House Audio
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About this audiobook
Celebrating a decade of Columbia Global Reports, the Forerunners series revives groundbreaking works of investigative journalism and incisive analysis published a century before CGR’s founding. These texts, once forgotten or underexplored, reflect CGR’s core mission: fearless reporting, global perspective, and intellectual rigor. Each selection remains strikingly relevant today, offering historical insights that challenge contemporary perspectives and reaffirm the power of journalism to shape the world.
In Drift and Mastery, a twenty-five-year-old Walter Lippmann surveyed what he saw as the chaos of newly industrial America and dreamed of a bold new future. Published in 1914, at the height of the Progressive Era, this audacious manifesto diagnosed the spiritual and political confusion of a nation grappling with unbridled capitalism, mass immigration, and the collapse of old certainties. Rejecting the sentimental populism of William Jennings Bryan and the moralizing of Woodrow Wilson, Lippmann embraced Theodore Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism,” envisioning a society led not by profiteers but by trained experts—scientists, managers, and professionals working for the common good.
More than a period piece, Drift and Mastery is striking in its embrace of centralized knowledge, its optimism about reform, and its blind spots about power. Nicholas Lemann’s incisive introduction places the book alongside the contemporary work of thinkers like John Dewey and W. E. B. Du Bois while highlighting its relevance in an age of populist backlash and elite mistrust. Lippmann’s flawed but fearless vision challenges us to rethink democratic leadership today.
In Drift and Mastery, a twenty-five-year-old Walter Lippmann surveyed what he saw as the chaos of newly industrial America and dreamed of a bold new future. Published in 1914, at the height of the Progressive Era, this audacious manifesto diagnosed the spiritual and political confusion of a nation grappling with unbridled capitalism, mass immigration, and the collapse of old certainties. Rejecting the sentimental populism of William Jennings Bryan and the moralizing of Woodrow Wilson, Lippmann embraced Theodore Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism,” envisioning a society led not by profiteers but by trained experts—scientists, managers, and professionals working for the common good.
More than a period piece, Drift and Mastery is striking in its embrace of centralized knowledge, its optimism about reform, and its blind spots about power. Nicholas Lemann’s incisive introduction places the book alongside the contemporary work of thinkers like John Dewey and W. E. B. Du Bois while highlighting its relevance in an age of populist backlash and elite mistrust. Lippmann’s flawed but fearless vision challenges us to rethink democratic leadership today.
About the author
Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) was one of the most influential American journalists and political commentators of the twentieth century. A founding editor of The New Republic and later a Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist for the New York Herald Tribune, he shaped public debate on democracy, propaganda, and public opinion. His major works include Drift and Mastery, Public Opinion, and The Phantom Public.
Nicholas Lemann is the director of Columbia Global Reports, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and dean emeritus of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he is the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism. He is the author of several acclaimed books, including Transaction Man, Redemption, The Big Test, and The Promised Land.
Nicholas Lemann is the director of Columbia Global Reports, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and dean emeritus of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he is the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism. He is the author of several acclaimed books, including Transaction Man, Redemption, The Big Test, and The Promised Land.
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