David M. Kennedy (historian)

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David M. Kennedy is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian specializing in American history. He is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University and the Director of the Center for the Study of the North American West. Professor Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic analysis and cultural analysis with social history and political history.

Kennedy is responsible for the recent editions of the popular history textbook The American Pageant. Earlier in his career, he won the Bancroft Prize for his Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (1970) and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for World War I, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980). He won the Pulitzer Prize for History for Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999).

Born in Seattle, Kennedy received his A.B. in History from Stanford and MA and PhD from Yale. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and, according to the jacket copy of The American Pageant, is married and the father of two sons and a daughter.

On October 21, 2007, Professor Kennedy wrote a critical review of the book "Conscience Of a Liberal" by Princeton University professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, which generated a great deal of controversy. For instance, Economist Mark Thoma criticized the fact that the Times chose a historian—rather than an economist—to review the book.^[1]

[edit] Books

• Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (1970)
  • John Gilmary Shea Prize, 1970
  • Bancroft Prize, 1971
• Social Thought in America and Europe, co-editor with Paul A. Robinson (1970)
• Progressivism: The Critical Issues, editor (1971)
• The American People in the Depression (1973)
• The American People in the Age of Kennedy (West Haven: Pendulum Press, 1973)
• The American Pageant: A History of the Republic, co-author with Thomas A. Bailey and Lizabeth Cohen (original 1979), Thirteenth Edition (2006).
• Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980)
  • Pulitzer Prize Finalist, 1981
• Power and Responsibility: Case Studies in American Leadership, co-editor with Michael Parrish (1986)
• The American Spirit: United States History as Seen by Contemporaries, co-editor with Thomas A. Bailey (1983)
• Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999)
  • Pulitzer Prize, 2000
  • Francis Parkman Prize, 2000
  • Ambassador's Prize, 2000
  • California Gold Medal for Literature, 2000

[edit] References