Authors

Brian W. Dippie is a professor emeritus of U.S. cultural history at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia. His specialty is the American West. Dippie’s books include Remington & Russell: The Sid Richardson Collection (1982) and Catlin and His Contemporaries: The Politics of Patronage (1990).  He recently curated “Take Two: George Catlin Revisits the West” at the Sid Richardson Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

—Thomas M. Disch’s books include The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World and The Sub: A Study in Witchcraft .

Wilson Dizard, Jr., was a USIA officer for 30 years, serving in Turkey, Greece, Iran, Pakistan, Poland, and Vietnam. The author of seven books, he has just completed a history of the USIA.

Byron Dobell was the Editor of American Heritage for eight years, during which time the magazine won or was a finalist for a National Magazine Award ten times. Before joining American Heritage, Dobell served as editor-in-chief of the Washington Post Book World, executive editor of New York Magazine, and editor of Esquire. Dobell was elected to the American Society of Magazine Editors’s Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame in 1998.

Humphrey Doermann is on the staff of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune and became interested inDonnelly in the course of reporting on current farm problems for those papers. For further reading: Populist Revolt, by John D. Hicks (University of Minnesota Press, 1931); The Lunatic Fringe , Gerald W. Johnson (Lippincott, 1957); In the Name of Science, by Martin Gardner (Putnam’s, 1952).

Eric Jay Dolin is a bestselling author of popular books on American history, maritime history, and the environment. His works include Fur, Fortune, And Empire, a history of America's fur trade, Black Flags, Blue Waters, about the history of pirating in America, and Leviathan, about the history of whaling in the U.S. His more recent book is A Furious Sky, which retraces 500 years of hurricanes in America and the impact they had on the nation's development.  Before becoming a full-time writer, Dolin worked as a fisheries policy analyst at the National Marine Fisheries Service, a program manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and an environmental consultant both in the U.S. and in London. He was also an American Association for the Advancement of Science writing fellow at Business Week.

A Mississippian by birth, David Herbert Donald (1920 – 2009) was the Charles Warren Professor of American History (emeritus from 1991) at Harvard University. He received the Pulitzer Prize twice (1961 and 1988), several honorary degrees, and served as president of the Southern Historical Association.

Jim Donovan is the author of several books, including Custer and the Little Bighorn (Voyageur Press, 2001); the New York Times bestseller A Terrible Glory (Little, Brown, 2008); The Blood of Heroes (Little, Brown, 2012); and Shoot for the Moon (Little, Brown), which was published in March 2019 and has been optioned for a limited TV series. Jim regularly speaks on these subjects, and he has guest-lectured and taught seminars on the craft of writing and the business of publishing (and getting published) at universities and writers’ conferences. 

Eugene Dorgan is an associate professor at the Art Institute of Boston.

Richard M. Dorson is chairman of the folklore program at the University of Indiana, Bloomington.

Best known as a novelist and member of the "Lost Generation" of American writers, Dos Passos (1896–1970) turned to writing history later in his career. His 1954 book The Head and Heart of Thomas Jefferson helped revived interest in our third President. Dos Passos served in World War I as an ambulance driver with his friend, the poet E.E. Cummings and in 1937, he returned to Spain with his friend Ernest Hemingway to cover the Spanish Civil War. During his distinguished career, Dos Passos wrote forty-two novels, as well as numerous poems, essays, and plays. His most widely read books were a 1925 novel about life in New York City, Manhattan Transfer, and the U.S.A. Trilogy, the first book of which appeared in 1930.

Esther M. Douty of Washington, D.C., is the author of The Story of Stephen Foster (Grosset & Dunlap) and of a forthcoming book dealing with the adventures of John Wise.

Clifford Dowdey lives in Richmond. Virginia. He has written a number of novels dealing with Civil War themes, and is the author of Experiments in Rebellion , an analysis of Confederate administration policies and achievements.

Combat officer in two wars, and author of numerous books, Fairfax Downey contributed “Yankee Gunners at Louisbourg” to the February, 1955, issue of AMERICAN HERITAGE .

Leonard Downie Jr. is the Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Cronkite School and the former executive editor and vice president of The Washington Post. During his 44 years in the Post newsroom, he was also an investigative reporter, editor on the local and national news staffs, London correspondent, and managing editor from 1984 to 1991 under then-executive editor Ben Bradlee. As deputy metro editor from 1972 to 1974, Downie helped supervise the Post’s Watergate coverage. He also oversaw the newspaper’s coverage of every national election from 1984 through 2008. 

Walter Harding, Distinguished Professor of English at the State University College at Geneseo, New York, has been secretary of the Thoreau Society for many years.

Clarence B. Drennon Fairlawn, Ohio

Barry Dressel is currently the Principal at Prologue History Services in Baltimore, Maryland.  He was educated at East Carolina University and the Getty Institute at the University of California at Berkeley.  Dressel was the President and CEO at the Indiana State Museum and the Executive Director at the City of Detroit Historical Department.   

Charles Stewart Dubow is a novelist. He was a founding editor of Forbes.com and later an editor at Businessweek.com. He was educated at Wesleyan University and New York University, and worked as a roustabout, a lumberjack, a sheepherder in New Zealand, and a congressional aide.

FROM Williamstown Branch BY R. L. DUFFUS, PUBLISHED BY W. W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC. ©195$ BY R. L. DUFFUS.

James P. Duffy is the author of over a dozen books, most on military history. His World War II titles include The Sinking of the Laconia and the U-Boat War, Target America, and Hitler's Secret Pirate Fleet. He has also written on the American Civil War and the rulers of Imperial Russia. Mr. Duffy's most recent book is War at the End of the World: Douglas MacArthur and the Forgotten Fight For New Guinea, 1942-1945. He resides with his family in New Jersey.

Dayton Duncan, the author of five books about the West, is the writer and co-producer of Ken Burns’s film, Lewis & Clark: The Journey of Discovery , to be broadcast by PBS at 8:00 P.M. EST on November 4 and 5. Alfred A. Knopf is publishing a companion book of the same name, written by Duncan and Burns, from which this essay is excerpted.

Judith Dunford, whose reviews have appeared in The New York Times and The New Republic , is the co-author of a novel, Cashing In .

This article is adapted, with the permission of the editor, from Wheeler’s Review , London, where it appeared in briefer form. Mr. Dunning is a producer for the B.B.C.

Brian Dunning is a journalist living near London. His article on the Welsh town of Milford Haven appeared in the June 1985 issue.

Colonel Dupuy, who retired from the Army in 1946 after thirty years’ service is the author of Men of West Point and co-author of the forthcoming Military Heritage of America .

A West Point graduate and a combat veteran of the Burma campaign in World War II, Colonel Trevor N. Dupuy has devoted himself to writing on military subjects since his retirement from the Army in 1958.

John Durant is the author of The Story of Baseball and (with Otto Bettmann) of The Pictorial History of American Sports . With his wife, Alice, he prepared the pictorial feature “A Century of Cooperstown” in the December, 1958, issue of AMERICAN HERITAGE .

Michael S. Durham’s article on the Mound Builders of the Ohio River Valley appeared in the April 1995 issue of American Heritage .

John Dvorak currently operates a telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Joseph D’O’Brian wrote “ The Business of Boxing ” in the October 1991 issue of American Heritage .

General Ira Clarence Eaker (1896 – 1987) was named commander of the Eighth Air Force on December 1, 1942. He was the architect of the Allied strategic bombing force that ultimately numbered forty groups of 60 heavy bombers each, supported by a subordinate fighter command of 1,500 aircraft, most of which was in place by the time he relinquished command at the start of 1944.

Gerald Early is the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in the African and African American Studies Department at Washington University in St. Louis, where he has taught since 1982.

Clement Eaton, professor of history at the University of Kentucky, has written a life of Henry Clay for the “Library of American Biography” series, and is the author of other books about the South.

A professor of English at the University of Michigan, Cecil Eby has taken a particular interest in the Spanish Civil War and the literature related to it. This article is taken from Between the Bullet and the Lie, Professor Eby’s study of American volunteers in that war; the book will be published this fall by Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

S. Max Edelson is  an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia and author of The New Map of Empire and Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina. Prof. Edelson is also director of MapScholar, an online visualization platform for map history.

Dr. Edmunds is the Anne and Chester Watson Chair of the History Department at the University of Texas at Dallas. Edmunds specializes in the History of Native Americans and the History of the American West, and won the Alfred Heggoy Prize for The Fox Wars: The Mesquakie Challenge to New France.

Dr. Sam Edwards, FRHistS, SFHEA, is a Reader in History in the Department of History, Politics and Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University. His first book, Allies in Memory: World War II and the Politics of Transatlantic Commemoration, 1941-2001 (Cambridge, 2015) was shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Prize. He has also authored numerous peer-reviewed articles and chapters and edited three volumes exploring various issues in international history. When not reading World War II histories, Sam can often be found hiking with his spaniel Topsy, running the occasional ultra-marathon, or cycling through the Forest of Bowland. His website is www.runninghistorian.com.

Bob Edwards is an author and award-winning broadcast journalist who has worked for NPR, Sirius/XM Radio, and other outlets. He has won the duPont-Columbia Award for radio journalism, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting for outstanding contributions to public radio, and a prestigious Peabody Institutional Award for excellence in broadcasting for his show “Morning Edition with Bob Edwards." Edwards was inducted into the national Radio Hall of Fame in November 2004.  Edwards has also written two books, including Fridays with Red, about his radio friendship with legendary sportscaster Red Barber, and most recently, Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism.  

William Waller Edwards is a retired colonel in the Regular Army, a graduate of West Point who served in the First World War and with the cavalry in the old West. Recently he has been engaged in writing a book on the last phases of the Revolution.

“U John Egerton is a journalist and historian whose books include The Americanization of Dixie and Visions of Utopia . He is currently at work on a history of Nashville, Tennessee.

Douglas R. Egerton is Professor of History at LeMoyne College. He is the author of six books, including He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey, Gabriel's Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 & 1802, and Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America; and Heirs of an Honored Name: The Decline of the Adams Family and the Rise of Modern America, which was a finalist for the 2020 George Washington Book Prize.

Peter Stevens, who lives in Quincy, Massachusetts, writes frequently on historical themes. Marian Eide is a graduate student in the Comparative Literature and Critical Theory Program at the University of Pennsylvania. We would like to thank Dr. Stephen Lazoritz for his contributions to the research of this article. Lazoritz, a pediatrician specializing in child-abuse cases, first became interested in Mary Ellen’s history when, preparing for a lecture on child abuse, he read “The Great Meddler,” Gerald Carson’s profile of Henry Bergh in the December 1967 issue of American Heritage. Lazoritz was fascinated by the child and traced her history through a trail of documents and newspaper articles. In the story of Mary Ellen’s childhood he found the roots of a movement to prevent child abuse in which he is very much involved today.