Eugen Weber - Career

Career

He was born the son of Sonia and Emmanuel Weber, a well-to-do industrialist. At the age of ten (10) his parents hired a private tutor. But the tutor did not stay long. From this age of 10 Weber was already reading The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas, adventure novels by Karl Frederich May, poetry by Victor Hugo and Homer. He was also reading George Sand, Jules Verne and "every cheap paperback I could afford". At age 12, he was sent to boarding school in Herne Bay, in southeastern England, and later to Ashville College, Harrogate.

During World War II, he served with the British Army in Belgium, Germany and India between 1943 and 1947 rising to the rank of captain. Afterward, Weber studied history at the Sorbonne and Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) in Paris.

He graduated with a BA in 1950 and an MA from Cambridge in 1954. In 1950, he married Jacqueline Brument-Roth. He then taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge (1953–1954) and the University of Alberta (1954–1955) before settling in the United States, where he taught first at the University of Iowa (1955–1956) and then, until 1993 on his retirement, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

At Cambridge University Eugen Weber studied with the historian David Thomson. He studied for his PhD but the dissertation was refused because the outside examiner, Alfred Cobban, of the University of London, gave a negative review of his dissertation, saying it lacked sufficient archival sources.

Eugen Weber wrote a column titled "LA Confidential" for the Los Angeles Times. He also wrote for several French popular newspapers and, in 1989, presented an American public television series, "The Western Tradition", which consisted of fifty two lectures of 30 minutes each.