He said the book will explore what the questions Summers is considering now will mean for Harvard and for higher education in the future.

It will also look at Summers as the man Blow says is “the first university president of the new century.”

“Larry, when he got the job, he was often described as a throwback to the old style of university president who spoke out on national issues,” Blow said. “I think that’s half right, because I also see him as a modern figure—the university president who’s also been shaped by the world outside.”

Though a number of books, including Morton and Phyllis Keller’s Making Harvard Modern and John Bethell’s Harvard Observed, have come out in recent years, Blow’s is the first to look so specifically at one Harvard president.

Blow said his book will, of necessity, include a balance between the current Harvard and the historical Harvard.

“One of the wonderful things about writing about this place is that it’s all connected—things have a short and long term significance and meaning,” Blow said.

Blow was a onetime student of history at Harvard, spending three years in a Ph.D. program and earning a masters degree before leaving to work in journalism.

—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.