Randolph Bourne

The State (Dodo Press) Randolph Bourne

Randolph Silliman Bourne (1886-1918) was a progressive writer and public intellectual born in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and a graduate of Columbia University. Bourne is best known for his essays, especially War is the Health of the State, which remained unfinished when found after his death. Bourne's articles appeared in the magazine, The Seven Arts and The New Republic, among other journals of the day. He was greatly influenced by Horace Kallen's 1915 essay Democracy Versus the Melting-Pot, and argued, like Kallen, that Americanism ought not to be associated with Anglo-Saxonism. In his 1916 article Trans- National America, Bourne argued that the US should accommodate immigrant cultures into a cosmopolitan America, instead of forcing immigrants to assimilate to Anglophilic culture. He was born with a deformed face and essentially a hunchback. He chronicled his experiences in his essay titled, The Handicapped.