I haven’t seen any obituaries yet, but will link to them when I do. I didn’t know him personally, but knew his work of course. That he reached a ripe old age doesn’t take away from the fact that this is a great loss.
Samuel Beer has died
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I took a course taught by Beer on British politics (almost exactly 30 years ago). His British Politics in the Collectivist Age is a good book, and I’m sure his work on American federalism (which I have not read) is also worth reading. I’ll let others talk about his legendary course Soc Sci 2. In addition to being a scholar, he was active in real world politics — chairman of ADA, I believe, at one point.
A legend — and a generous correspondent. When I was investigating the history of the “Western civ” course, he shared a number of reflections with me, pointed me in the direction of some intriguing syllabi, and gave me the complete story of how he’d designed the Harvard version of the class. Plus we ended up talking a bit about the postwar Germany project that my Western civ work was part of. I didn’t have many interactions with him, but I had enough to know that this guy was one of the greats.
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