When Barrington Moore, Jr., died October 16 at age ninety-two, I remembered the mandatory meetings for coffee he scheduled with students at the place he called “the greasy spoon down the block” in Harvard Square. At the time—1966 and 1967—I had enrolled in his graduate seminars in the Harvard Government Department. He was tall and gaunt, and looked stern and humorless; we were all deeply intimidated by his knowledge of the history of pretty much everything. His new book, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, dealt with the histories of the United States, England, France, Russia, China, and India—displaying a breadth and depth that inspired awe.

He seemed to personify the life of the mind. But the spirit of the sixties had somehow reached him, and he wanted to know more about what his students were thinking and doing. So he invited us to have coffee with him after class. We were divided into small groups and assigned different days—by his secretary, Rose deBened...

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