Authors

These definitions were drawn from A Glossary of Colonial American Words by Richard M. Lederer, Jr.

A Connecticut Yankee by birth, W. Storrs Lee is a free-lance writer who now “commutes” between homes in Maine and in Hawaii. He wrote Yankees of Connecticut (1957), Great California Deserts (1963), and The Islands (1966). For further reading: A History of Connecticut , by G. L. Clark (Putnam’s, 1914).

Derek Leebaert is an author and technology executive who has written several books on American history and the military. His works include Fifty-Year Wound: How America’s Cold War Victory Shapes Our World (2002), To Dare and to Conquer: Special Operations and the Destiny of Nations from Achilles to Al Qaeda (2006), and Grand Improvisation, for which he won the biennial 2020 Truman Book Award. Leebaert's latest book is Unlikely Heroes: Franklin Roosevelt, His Four Lieutenants, and the World They Made.

COPYRIGHT © 1959 BY MARGARET LEECH PULITZER

Sandra Leff is director of research at the Graham Gallery in New York City.

Godfrey D. Lehman (1916-2010) was a salesman and journalist whose passion was the jury system. In 1997, he authored the book We the Jury: The Impact of Jurors on Our Basic Freedoms : Great Jury Trials of History

—John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, has just published On Seas of Glory , a history of the U.S. Navy.

A steady contributor to American Heritage, David Lehman has written both poetry and nonfiction books. He edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry and helped found The Best American Poetry, an annual collection of American poems, in 1988. In 1990, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Lehman an Academy Award in literature, and his latest works include Yeshiva Boys, a book of poems, and A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs, both released in 2009. Mr. Lehman currently serves as the Associate Professor of Writing at the New School of New York.

Besides writing about early American cooking, Ann Leighton also grows some of its ingredients in the seventeenthcentury garden of the John Whipple House, Ipswich, Massachusetts, just declared a National Historic Landmark. This article is based on a chapter of her forthcoming book, For Meate and Medicine , to be published by Houghton Mifflin Company late next year.

ChrisTina Leimer, author of the Web site The Tombstone Traveller’s Guide , writes and lectures on American funeral practices. For more information on Hollywood Forever Cemetery, call 323-469-1181.

Nicholas Lemann has been the Dean and Henry R. Luce Professor at the Columbia School of Journalism since 2003. Lemann began his journalism career as a 17-year-old writer for an alternative weekly newspaper there, the Vieux Carre Courier. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1976, where he concentrated in American history and literature and was president of the Harvard Crimson. After graduation, he worked at the Washington Monthly, as an associate editor and then managing editor; at Texas Monthly, as an associate editor and then executive editor; at The Washington Post, as a member of the national staff; at The Atlantic Monthly, as national correspondent; and at The New Yorker, as staff writer and then Washington correspondent.

Mark Edward Lender is Professor Emeritus of History at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, and the coauthor of A Respectable Army and Citizen Soldier. He coauthored with Garry Wheeler Stone Fatal Sunday: George Washington, the Monmouth Campaign, and the Politics of Battle, a finalist for the 2017 George Washington Prize.

Edward G. Lengel is a historian in residence at Colonial Williamsburg, and previously served as Chief Historian of The White House Historical Association. Before that, Lengel was Editor-in-Chief of The Papers of George Washington and Professor at the University of Virginia. Mr. Lengel is the author most recently of Never In Finer Company: The Men of the Great War’s Lost Battalion. He is also author of Thunder and Flames: Americans in the Crucible of Combat, 1917-1918 (2015), To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918 (2008), and This Glorious Struggle: George Washington's Revolutionary War letters (2007).

Novelist, essayist, and professor of English at McGill University in Montreal, Hugh MacLennan has five times won the Governor General’s Award, Canada’s counterpart to the Pulitzer prize. He is best known in the United States for his widely acclaimed novel, The Watch That Ends the Night . “By Canoe to Empire” will be included in his latest book, Seven Rivers of Canada , soon to be published by Scribner’s. For further reading: The Voyageur , by Grace Lee Nute (Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, 1955); The Fur Trade in Canada , by Harold A. Innis (Yale University, 1930). © 1961 BY HUGH MAC LENNAN

Born in Toronto, Michael Lennick is a documentary filmmaker who has written and directed film and television series on space travel and technology for over 25 years. He is currently president and CEO of Foolish Earthling Productions, which has produced programming for The Discovery Channel, PBS, and other channels. His documentary "Dr. Teller's Very Large Bomb" chronicles the Manhattan Project and aired in 2006. 

John Leonard is the television critic for New York magazine. This essay was adapted from Smoke and Mirrors: Violence, Television and Other American Cultures , just published by the New Press.

Thomas C. Leonard, an assistant professor of history at Columbia University, has recently completed work on a book entitled Above the Battle: War Making in America from Appomattox to Versailles . This article is adapted from an essay that originally appeared in American Quarterly .

Aldo Leopold was an American ecologist, forester, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac, which has sold over two million copies.

Edward E. Leslie is the author of Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls: True Stories of Castaways and Other Survivors . His Quantrill biography is forthcoming from Random House.

William E. Leuchtenburg, a prominent 20th century historian, is the William Rand Kenan, Jr. professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He has won the Bancroft and Parkman prizes, and has written numerous books on Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, and the New Deal. He won the 2007 North Carolina Award for Literature.

Stuart Leuthner designs Chronos , the magazine for the connoisseur of fine timepieces. His latest book, Starlight on the Rails , will be published next year by HarperCollins.

Richard Levick, Esq., is Chairman and CEO of LEVICK, a strategic communications firm, and a frequent television, radio, online, and print commentator. He hosts regular podcasts in partnership with major magazines including the Corporate Counsel Business Journal, In-House Community (Asian-MENA Counsel), and American Heritage. Mr. Levick has co-authored five books including The Communicators: Leadership in the Age of Crisis; Stop the Presses; The Crisis and Litigation PR Desk Reference; 365 Marketing Meditations; and Lessons for Absent Children. You can follow him on Twitter @richardlevick. More info is at: Visit levick.com/about/richard-s-levick/  

Yuval Levin is the founder and editor of National Affairs and the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He is also a senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. Dr. Levin is the author of six books, including American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation―and Could Again and The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left. He has published essays and articles in numerous publications, including Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Commentary, and is interviewed frequently on radio and television.

Alexandra Lee Levin, granddaughter of Fanny Knight, lives in Baltimore. She is now at work on a study of English women playwrights of the eighteen century.

David Levine is a freelance writer whose work has been published in the New York Times, American Heritage, Sports Illustrated and many other publications. He is a contributing writer at Hudson Valley Magazine, Arrive and Governing, among other publications. He is the author or co-author of six books about sports, among them Life on the Rim and In the Land of Giants. He lives in Albany, NY with his wife, Kimberly, and daughter, Grace.

Mr. Levine, an associate professor of history at Berkeley, is the author of Defender of the Faith , a study of William Jennings Bryan (1965), and co-editor of The Shaping of Twentieth Century America (1965) and The National Temper (1968). He is currently writing a study of Negro culture in twentieth-century America.

Robert A. Levy is chairman of the board of the Cato Institute and the organizer and financial backer behind District of Columbia v. Heller, the landmark 2008 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to gun ownership.  Mr. Levy's writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, National Review, and many other publications. His latest book is The Dirty Dozen: How 12 Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom.  He frequently discusses public policy on national radio and TV programs, including ABC’s Nightline, Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor, PBS’s Newshour, and NBC’s Today Show.

Michael Lewis, a senior editor at The New Republic and the author of Liar’s Poker , has just finished his first novel, The Troublemaker.

Before becoming a professor of business history at the University of Michigan in 1966, David L. Lewis spent twelve years on the public relations staffs of Borden’s, Ford, and General Motors. He has published numerous articles on Henry Ford and his company in automotive journals and various other periodicals.

JAMES E. LEWIS, JR., is professor of history at Kalamazoo College. His books include The Louisiana Purchase: Jefferson’s Noble Bargain? and John Quincy Adams: Policymaker for the Union.

Philip H. Liberman, M.D. New York, N.Y.

Grace Lichtenstein is the Rocky Mountain correspondent for the New York Times .

Allan J. Lichtman is Distinguished Professor of History at American University, where he has taught since 1973.  Holding a B.A .magna cum laude from Brandeis University, he received his PhD from Harvard University in 1973.  The recipient of the university's Scholar/Teacher of the Year for 1992-93, he is the author of many books and has lectured widely in the United States and elsewhere.

Sir Basil (known as Capt. B.H. Littell Hart before he was knighted in 1966) was one of the 20th Century's foremost authorities on military tactics and strategy, and especially on mechanized warfare. After being highly decorated during World War I and surviving a gas attack, he retired from the British Army in 1927. Liddell Hart worked as the Military Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph from 1925–1935, and of The Times, 1935-1939. He then wrote a number of highly regarded military biographies, and books such as The Strategy of Indirect Approach (1941) and The Way to Win Wars (1942).

In addition to his writing, Michael S. Lief works as a senior deputy district attorney in Southern California. He co-authored The Devil's Advocates with H. Mitchell Caldwell in 2007 after previously writing And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: Greatest Closing Arguments Protecting Civil Liberties and Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury with Mr. Caldwell. "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down" was cited in a brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Kiyemba et. al. v. Obama. During the Cold War, Lief served in the United States Navy as a submarine driver.

Paul R. Lilly has been a schoolteacher, a parole officer, and a construction worker in West Virginia. Now retired, he lives in Lewisburg.

Eric Lindner is an attorney and businessman, and the author of Tiger in the Sea: The Ditching of Flying Tiger 923 and the Desperate Struggle for Survival, which tells the harrowing story of a flight piloted by his father-in-law, John Murray, that crashed in the North Atlantic. His first book, Hospice Voices: Lessons for Living at the End of Life, was based on Lindner's work as a hospice volunteer, helping patients cope with the reality of dying.  Mr. Lindner's career has mostly focused on parking and real estate in the U.S. and Europe as Chairman and CEO of Colonial Parking based in Washington, DC. He has also worked in criminology, clerked for a U.S. Attorney, and served as a George Washington University trustee for nine years.

David Lindsay is the author of Madness in the Making: The Triumphant Rise and Untimely Fall of America’s Show Inventors (Kodansha International, 1997).

Les Line is editor of Audubon , the magazine of the National Audubon Society, and is writing books on The World of the Nature Photographer and on the history and natural history of the Great Lakes region.

Richard Lingeman, executive editor of The Nation , is author of Don’t You Know There’s a War On? , Small Town America , and a two-volume biography of Dreiser.

Andro Linklater’s book Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy is being published in November by Walker & Company.

The late Robert N. Linscott, a former editor of Random House, had retired to a farmstead in Ashfield, Massachusetts, when, in 1960, he first encountered the papers of Sylvester Judd. This article was sent to us by his wife.

A former resident of Concord, David B. Little now lives in Salem, Massachusetts, where he is director of the noted Essex Institute, which operates a historical museum, research library, and five houses that date from 1684 to 1804.

Leon Litwack is the A.F. and May T. Morrison Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, former president of the Organization of American Historians (OAH, and Pulitzer-prize winning author. His publications include North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (1961); Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (1980), winner of the Pulitzer and Francis Parkman prizes; Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (1998); and How Free is Free? The Long Death of Jim Crow (2009).