Rediscovering Abraham Lincoln

Civil War scholar John Y. Simon was born in Highland Park, Illinois on June 25, 1933. He received a B. A. from Swarthmore College and an M. A. and Ph.D. in history from Harvard University. He taught at Ohio State University before becoming a member of the Southern Illinois University history department in 1964. During his 34 years there, he taught show more courses on the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the history of Illinois. He also wrote and edited numerous books about Lincoln, Grant, and the Civil War. Beginning in 1962, he started editing the papers of Ulysses S. Grant, which comprised of thousands of documents and annotations, and set a new standard for the organization of historical documents. In 2004, he received a Lincoln Prize for his work. He was nearing completion of this project when he died on July 8, 2008. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Harold Holzer is one of the leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the Civil War era. He is a prolific writer and lecturer. He has written, co-written and edited over 30 books including Abraham Lincoln, The Writer (2000), which was named to the Children's Literature Choice List and the Bank Street Best Children's Books show more of the Year, and Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President (2004), which won a 2005 Lincoln Prize. He has also written over 425 popular magazine and scholarly journal articles and numerous pamphlets and monographs. He has won numerous awards including the Barondess Award of the Civil War Round Table of New York five times; the Award of Achievement from the Lincoln Group of New York three times; a 1988 George Washington Medal; the 2000 Newman Book Award; and the 2008 National Humanities Medal. He is the Senior Vice President for External Affairs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. (Bowker Author Biography) show less