John M. Murrin studies American colonial and revolutionary history and the early republic. He has edited one multivolume series and five books, including two essay collections--COLONIAL AMERICA: ESSAYS IN POLITICS AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, 6th Edition (2010) and SAINTS AND REVOLUTIONARIES: ESSAYS IN EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY (1984). His own essays cover topics ranging from ethnic tensions, the early history of trial by jury, the emergence of the legal profession, the Salem witch trials, the political culture of the colonies and the new nation as well as the rise of professional baseball and college football in the nineteenth century. He served as president of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic in 1998 - 1999.
James M. McPherson is the author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, which won a Pulitzer Prize in history, and For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, a Lincoln Prize winner. He is the George Henry Davis Professor of American History at Princeton University in New Jersey, where he also lives. His newest book, entitled Abraham Lincoln, celebrates the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth with a short, but detailed look at this president's life.
A specialist in early national social history, Paul E. Johnson is the author of THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 1789 - 1829 (2006); SAM PATCH, THE FAMOUS JUMPER (2003); and A SHOPKEEPER'S MILLENNIUM: SOCIETY AND REVIVALS IN ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, 1815 - 1837, 25th Anniversary Edition (2004). In addition, he is coauthor (with Sean Wilentz) of THE KINGDOM OF MATTHIAS: SEX AND SALVATION IN 19TH-CENTURY AMERICA (1994) and is editor of AFRICAN-AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY: ESSAYS IN HISTORY (1994). He was awarded the Merle Curti Prize of the Organization of American Historians (1980), the Richard P. McCormack Prize of the New Jersey Historical Association (1989), and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1985 - 1986), the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1995), the Gilder Lehrman Institute (2001) and the National Endowment for the Humanities We the People Fellowship (2006 - 2007).
Gary Gerstle is the Paul Mellon Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge. He previously taught at Princeton University, the Catholic University of America, the University of Maryland, and Vanderbilt University. A historian of the twentieth-century United States, he is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of six books and the author of nearly 35 articles. His books include WORKING-CLASS AMERICANISM: THE POLITICS OF LABOR IN A TEXTILE CITY, 1914-1960 (1989); AMERICAN CRUCIBLE: RACE AND NATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (2001), winner of the Saloutos Prize for the best work in immigration and ethnic history; THE RISE AND FALL OF THE NEW DEAL ORDER, 1930-1980 (1989); and RULING AMERICA: WEALTH AND POWER IN A DEMOCRACY (2005). A new book on the principles underlying the use of public power in America from the Revolution to the present will soon be published by Princeton University Press. He has served on the board of editors of the Journal of American History and the American Historical Review. His honors include a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the Harmsworth Visiting Professorship of American History at the University of Oxford, and membership in the Society of American Historians.
Alice Fahs is a specialist in American cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her book THE IMAGINED CIVIL WAR: POPULAR LITERATURE OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH, 1861-1865 (2001) was a finalist in 2002 for the Lincoln Prize. Together with Joan Waugh, she published the edited collection THE MEMORY OF THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICAN CULTURE (2004). She also edited Louisa May Alcott's HOSPITAL SKETCHES (2004), an account of Alcott's nursing experiences during the Civil War first published in 1863. Fahs's most recent book is OUT ON ASSIGNMENT: NEWSPAPER WOMEN AND THE MAKING OF MODERN PUBLIC SPACE (2011). Her honors include an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship and a Gilder Lehrman Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Newberry Library, and the Huntington Library.