Edward C. Banfield

Edward Christie Banfield (November 19, 1916 – September 30, 1999) was an American political scientist, best known as the author of The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (1958), and The Unheavenly City (1970). One of the leading scholars of his generation, Banfield was an adviser to three Republican presidents: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. Banfield began his academic career at the University of Chicago, where he was a friend and colleague of Leo Strauss and Milton Friedman.

In 1959, Banfield went to Harvard, where he remained for the rest of his career except for a brief tenure at the University of Pennsylvania.

Banfield grew up on a farm in Bloomfield, Connecticut and attended the University of Connecticut, where he studied English and agriculture.

His wife, Laura Fasano Banfield, learned Italian as a child, and she helped her husband with his book about a poor village in Southern Italy (The Moral Basis of a Backward Society). She also collaborated with Harvey Mansfield on a translation of Niccolò Machiavelli's Florentine Histories. She died in 2006.

Banfield’s son, Elliott, is an artist/designer/cartoonist in New York City; his daughter, Laura, is founding partner of law firm Hoguet, Newman, & Regal, LLP and the mother of three daughters, Laura Kosar, Helen LaCroix, and Marie Hoguet.

...
Wikipedia