Max Pearson Cushing

Max Pearson Cushing was an American scholar and author whose best-known work is Baron d'Holbach: A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France. The book began as doctoral work at Columbia University and was published in 1914, showing his deep interest in French intellectual history and the more rebellious currents of Enlightenment thought.

Sources found during research describe him as a graduate of Bowdoin College who later earned both an A.M. and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has also been described as a professor, author, and choirmaster, and as having worked in intelligence during World War I.

Although he is not widely known today, Cushing's study of d'Holbach has remained accessible through Project Gutenberg and later reprints, helping modern readers discover a writer who took radical ideas seriously and treated them with patient, academic care.