Historians William Leuchtenburg, Gary May and Timothy Naftali join the National Constitution Center to discuss the terms of Herbert Hoover, John Tyler and George H.W. Bush, including their achievements and challenges, from foreign conflicts to domestic crises.
Sean Wilentz, professor of history at Princeton University, moderates.
Bio
William E. Leuchtenburg
William E. Leuchtenburg, a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a noted authority on twentieth-century American history. A winner of both the Bancroft and Parkman prizes, he is the author of numerous books on the New Deal, including The FDR Years: On Roosevelt & His Legacy.
In 2008, he was chosen as the first recipient of the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Award for Distinguished Writing in American History of Enduring Public Significance. His most recent book is a biography of our 31st President, Herbert Hoover.
Gary May
Gary May is a professor of history at the University of Delaware. He is the author of four books, including the critically acclaimed The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Liuzzo.
His newest book is a biography of our 10th President, John Tyler.
Timothy J. Naftali
Timothy Naftali, author of George H.W. Bush, is the director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, having previously served as director of the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia.
A frequent contributor to Slate and NPR, he is the co-author of the award-winning Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary and One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964. He is also the author of Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism.
Sean Wilentz
Sean Wilentz is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1979.
Wilentz took his B.A. at Columbia University in 1972, before earning another B.A. at Oxford University on a Kellett Fellowship and his Ph.D. at Yale University. His historical scholarship has focused mainly on the early years of the American republic.
His major study to date, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, received the Bancroft Prize in 2006 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His first book, Chants Democratic, won several awards, including the Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association.
A contributing editor at The New Republic, Wilentz writes widely on music and the arts as well as history and politics, and has received a Grammy nomination and, from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, a Deems Taylor Award for musical commentary. He is the historian-in-residence of bobdylan.com, the official Bob Dylan web site.