Allan Nevins

Joseph Allan Nevins (born May 20, 1890 in Camp Point , Illinois , † March 5, 1971 in Menlo Park ) was an American historian and journalist. He is best known for his history of the American Civil War and its prehistory.

Life

Nevins grew up on a farm and graduated from the University of Illinois with a master's degree in English in 1913. He then went to New York City as a journalist for the New York Evening Post and remained a journalist for about 20 years. He published his first historical book in 1914 and published about 50 in total. He also taught at Columbia University from 1928 , where he became a professor in 1939, succeeding Evarts Boutell Greene , his former teacher in Illinois. He started an oral history program at Columbia University, the first in the United States. In retirement, he moved to California and was a Senior Research Associate at the Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino, California , where he wrote the remaining volumes of his Civil War history. In 1938 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1951 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

1940/41 and 1964/65 he was visiting professor at Oxford University (Harmsworth Professor of American History).

He wrote many biographies, including the US President Grover Cleveland , the Secretary of State and Governor of New York Hamilton Fish , the industrialists Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller (a biography authorized by the family), and the diplomat Henry White and the explorer and Republican presidential candidate John C. Frémont . He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1933 for the biography of Grover Cleveland , and another in 1937 for the biography of Hamilton Fish.

His main work is the history of the prehistory and history of the American Civil War Ordeal of the Union , The Emergence of Lincoln and The War for the Union , published in eight volumes from 1947 to 1971. It goes until 1865 and is considered a standard work. He was unable to complete the volume on post-war reconstruction. The last two volumes received the National Book Award in 1972.

From 1961 to 1966 he headed the Civil War Centennial Commission , which published the 15-volume series The Impact of the Civil War .

He was a supporter of John F. Kennedy and wrote a foreword to his Profiles of Courage .

1959/60 he was president of the American Historical Association . The Allan Nevins Prize is named after him. His interview with a New York local politician, conducted in 1948, is widely regarded as the justification for oral history .

Fonts

• The Life of Robert Rogers , 1914
• The Evening post; a century of journalism , 1922
• Publisher: American Social History as Recorded by British Travelers , 1923
• The American states during and after the revolution, 1775-1789 , 1927 Online
• A History of American Life vol. VIII: The Emergence of Modern America 1865-1878 , 1927
• Frémont, the West's greatest adventurer; being a biography from certain hitherto unpublished sources of General John C. Frémont, together with his wife, Jessie Benton Frémont, and some account of the period of expansion which found a brilliant leader in the Pathfinder , 1928, Online
• Polk ; the diary of a president, 1845–1849, covering the Mexican war, the acquisition of Oregon, and the conquest of California and the Southwest, 1929
• Henry White; thirty years of American diplomacy , 1930
• Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage , 1930
• Letters of Grover Cleveland, 1850-1908; , 1933
• Contributions to Dictionary of American Biography , 1934-1936, including Alexander Hamilton , Rutherford B. Hayes , Warren G. Harding , Calvin Coolidge
• Abram S. Hewitt: with the same account of Peter Cooper , 1935
• Hamilton Fish; the inner history of the Grant administration , 1935 Volume 1 Volume 2
• The Gateway to History , 1938. Online
• The emergence of modern America, 1865-1878 , 1941
• Ordeal of the Union , 2 volumes, New York: Scribner 1947:
  • 1. Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852;
  • 2. A House Dividing, 1852-1857
• The Emergence of Lincoln , 2 volumes, New York, Scribner 1950:
  • 3. Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 1857-1859;
  • 4. Prologue to Civil War, 1859-1861
• The War for the Union , New York: Scribner, 4 volumes, 1959–1971
  • 5. The Improvised War, 1861-1862;
  • 6. War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863;
  • 7. The Organized War, 1863-1864;
  • 8. The Organized War to Victory, 1864-1865
• with Frank Ernest Hill: Ford , 3 volumes, 1954–1963
• John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise . 2 volumes, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940
• with Henry Steele Commager America. The story of a free people , 1942
• with Henry Steele Commager Readings in American History , 1939
• with Commager A short history of the United States , New York 1945, 6th edition Knopf / Random House 1976
• Study In Power: John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Philanthropist . 2 volumes. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953
• History of the USA , Bremen: Schünemann 1967

literature

• Gerald L. Fetner: Immersed in Great Affairs: Allan Nevins and the Heroic Age of American History , 2004

Web links

• Encyclopedia Britannica
• Literature by and about Allan Nevins in the WorldCat bibliographic database

Individual evidence

1. ^ Members: Allan Nevins. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 17, 2019 .