Daniel Aaron (Americanist)

Daniel Aaron in 2010

Daniel Aaron (born August 4, 1912 in Chicago , Illinois , † April 30, 2016 ) was an American historian and Americanist.

He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1933 , worked outside the university, and was the first to earn a PhD from Harvard University in American Civilization in 1943 . His mentor at Harvard was Perry Miller . Aaron taught at Smith College from 1939 to 1971 . From 1971 until his retirement in 1983 he taught as Victor S. Thomas Professor of English and American Literature at Harvard. In 1973 he was admitted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1997 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Aaron's book Writers on the Left , his best-known work, introduces the communist elite writers in the United States of the first half of the 20th century, authors such as Max Eastman , Granville Hicks , Floyd Dell, John Reed , Mike Gold, Howard Fast , Joseph Freeman (editors of the New Masses ) and sympathizers such as Edmund Wilson , Malcolm Cowley , Theodore Dreiser or Langston Hughes .

In 1985, Aaron published The Inman Diaries , a two-volume selection from Arthur Crew Inman's original 155-volume diary .

Publications (selection)

Men of Good Hope: A Story of American Progressives. Oxford University Press, New York 1951.
Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary Communism. Harcourt, Brace & World, New York 1961.
The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1972.
Cincinnati, Queen City of the West, 1819-1838. Ohio State University Press, Columbus 1992.
The Americanist . University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 2007. (autobiography)

Excerpts from works by Daniel Aaron:

personal data
SURNAME	Aaron, Daniel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American historian and Americanist
DATE OF BIRTH	4th August 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH	Chicago , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH	April 30, 2016