WORKS of philosophy can last for millennia, novels for centuries. Works of history, if they're really good, survive maybe a generation. But Richard Hofstadter's The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It is now celebrating its fiftieth year in print and remains a solid backlist seller. High school students, undergraduates, and graduate students read it, as do lay readers. Journalists grab it off the shelf when they need to pepper a column with a dash of historical authority. Academic historians revere it too: whenever they set out to write about it, they end up producing panegyrics. Like a robust octogenarian, the vigorous old book invites us to inquire of