Authors

John R. McCormick is owner and president of the Communications Guild Company in Huntsville, Alabama.

Thomas K. McCraw, an associate professor of history at the University of Texas and current Iy a visiting professor at the Harvard School of Business Administration, is the author of TV A and the Power Fight, 1933-1939 (1971)

David McCullough was an author, historian, lecturer, and former editor at American Heritage. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and Francis Parkman Prizes. He has also earned the Los Angeles Times Book Award, New York Public Library's Literary Lion Award, the Saint Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

John McDonough, who has written on jazz for many years for Down Beat and The Wall Street Journal, wrote the liner notes for the seventy-fifth-anniversary reissue of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s first recordings. He is currently a lecturer in jazz history for the Department of Music Performance Studies at Northwestern University.

Walter A. McDougall is Professor of History and the Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania. A graduate of Amherst College and a Vietnam veteran, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1974. McDougall is the author of many books, most recently Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History, 1585-1828 (2004). His other recent books include Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter With the World Since 1776 (1997) and Let the Sea Make a Noise: A History of the North Pacific from Magellan to MacArthur (1993). In 1986, Professor McDougall won the Pulitzer Prize for The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age.

William S. McFeely (1930-2019) was an American historian and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Grant: A Biography (W. W. Norton, 1981). He was also the Lincoln Prize-winning author of Frederick Douglass (W. W. Norton, 1991) and several other biographies, including Sapelo’s People: A Long Walk into Freedom (W. W. Norton, 1994); Yankee Stepfather: General O. O. Howard and the Freedmen (W. W. Norton, 1983); and Portrait: The Life of Thomas Eakins (W. W. Norton, 2006).

An associate professor at the University of Texas, Thomas F. McGann specializes in the history of Latin America. He is the author of Argentina, the United States and the Inter-American System, 1880–1914 , and many articles, including “Prescott’s Conquests” ( AMERICAN HERITAGE , October, 1957). For further reading: The Journey and Route of Álvar Núñez, Cabeza de Vaca , by Cleve Hallenbeck (Arthur H. Clark Co., 1939); The Narrative of Álvar Núñez Cabeça de Vaca , edited by Frederick W. Hodge (Scribner’s, 1907); The Odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca , by Morris Bishop (Century, 1933).

Mrs. McKee, who holds a Ph.D. in American studies, was Visiting Research Associate in Naval History at the Smithsonian Institution last year.

Larry G. McKee, a writer and photographer, lives in Altoona.

James D. Hart, professor of English at the University of California, is the author of The Oxford Companion to American Literature and The Popular Book .

James McKinley is the author of Assassination in America .

Sam McKinney is coordinator of the Columbia River Heritage Program at the Oregon Historical Society. His recent book, Reach of Tide, Ring of History , was published by the Oregon Historical Society Press.

John McLaughlin is an Emeritus Professor of English at Clemson University, where he was head of the Humanities Division. He is the author of Jefferson and Monticello, about the life of Thomas Jefferson as seen through the prism of his fifty-year love affair with Monticello, which was nominated for a National Book Award in 1988. McLaughlin also wrote To His Excellency Thomas Jefferson, Letters to a President, and has contributed to such scholarly journals as Shakespeare Quarterly and Modern Drama.

Mike McLaughlin and his wife live in Winthrop, Massachusetts. They are deeply grateful to the members of the U.S.S. Maddox Association for all their assistance in writing this article, especially Ken and Lily Chestnut. Readers wishing to know more about the Maddox can get in touch with the U.S. Naval Institute’s History Department in Annapolis, Maryland, for contact information.

Dr. McMahon is director of historical programs at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute.

Jodi McMaster, a Texas lawyer, is the author of the forthcoming Beyond Slip and Fall: Premises Liability for Paralegals (Estrin Publishing).

George McMillan wrote The Old Breed: A History of the First Marine Division in World War II; he served with the division in the Pacific theatre as a Marine combat correspondent. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he has contributed articles on the Corps and on other subjects to many of the nation’s leading periodicals. The drawings on this and the preceding pages were done by Mitchell Jamieson, a Navy combat artist in World War II and now a faculty member at the University of Maryland.

Larry McMurtry is the author of twenty-nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove. His other works include two collections of essays, three memoirs, and more than thirty screenplays, including the co-authorship of Brokeback Mountain, for which he received an Academy Award. His most recent novel, When the Light Goes, is available from Simon & Schuster. He lives in Archer City, Texas

Catherine McNeur is an associate professor of history at Portland State University and the author of Taming Manhattan and Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science. Prof. McNeur is the recipient of several awards, including the American Society for Environmental History’s George Perkins Marsh Prize. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Mac McPhail is a columnist for The Sampson Independent of Clinton, NC, and author of Wandering Thoughts from a Wondering Mind, a collection of his columns from over the years.

James M. McPherson, the George Henry Davis ’86 Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University, is perhaps America’s foremost living Civil War scholar. Among his books are his one-volume history of the war, Battle Cry of Freedom, Lincoln and The Second American Revolution, and For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, winner of the Lincoln Prize in 1998. 

Mary Frech McVicker is a full-time writer of both fiction and nonfiction based in Brookfield, Illinois.

Ellen B. Meacham is an award-winning writer who teaches journalism at The University of Mississippi and is the author of Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi. (University Press of Mississippi, 2018) Her work has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today Online, Charleston Post and Courier, Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, and numerous other publications. She has been featured on “Hardball with Chris Matthews” on MSNBC, the BBC, Ireland’s Newstalk Radio, Newsmax television, “Marketplace with Kai Ryssdal” and on numerous other public radio shows around the nation.

Jon Meacham is a renowned presidential historian, contributing writer to The New York Times Book Review, contributing editor at TIME, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author whose latest books include, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (Random House, 2018) and Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush (Random House, 2015). 

Judson Mead is associate editor of Americana magazine.

Charles L. Mee, Jr.’s most recent book is The Genius of the People , the story of the Constitutional Convention. It was published by Harper & Row earlier this year. Mr. Mee lives in New York.

Ira Meistrich is a freelance television producer who lives in New York City

Greg Melville is an author and journalist who teaches English at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he was the recipient of the school's Award for Teaching Excellence in 2019. His writing has appeared in many top publications including Outside, Men's Health, National Geographic Traveler, and The New York Times. Melville's environmental book Greasy Rider was the 'campus common read' for six colleges and universities, and named by the American Library Association as one of the top 100 "Outstanding Books for the College Bound" for the first decade of the 2000s. He has served as an editor at Men's Journal, Sports Afield, and Footwear News and as a reporter for a daily newspaper in Northern Virginia.

Phillips Melville is a retired Air Force colonel now living in Washington, D.C., who has undertaken a new career as a marine artist and author.

Louis Menand is a professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. This essay is adapted from his introduction to Pragmatism: A Reader , which is being published by Vintage this month.

Ink Mendelsohn is a writer and editor for the Smithsonian News Service.

Gregg Herken, author of Counsels of War , is writing a book about presidential science advisers. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.

An attorney and free-lance writer, Bill Merrell is also the head coach of women’s intercollegiate soccer at the University of California at Berkeley.

Robert Merry is the former editor of The American Conservative and a longtime Washington journalist and publishing executive. He has published five books on American history and foreign policy, including President McKinley: Architect of the American Century. Merry spent 12 years as a political reporter for The Wall Street Journal and 22 years as an executive at Congressional Quarterly Inc., including 12 years as CEO. After CQ was sold to The Economist of London, he served as editor of The National Interest. 

David W. Messer Royersford, Pa.

Zachariah Paulo Messitte is the 13th president of Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin, and a professor in the Politics and Government Department. He is the author of numerous articles that reflect his interests in politics, international relations, higher education, sports and Italy. His work has appeared in both peer reviewed journals and the national press, including The New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, and have covered topics pertaining to the cost of higher education, NCAA Division III student-athletes, Spiro Agnew, the CIA and promoting civil discourse. The author and editor of several books, he most recently co-authored Republican Populist: Spiro Agnew and the Origins of Donald Trump’s America, published by the University of Virginia Press in 2019. 

Larry L. Meyer is former editor of Westways and Colorado magazines and the author of Shadow of a Continent: The American West in 1776. He also is a Lecturer in Journalism at California State University at Long Beach.

Eugene L. Meyer is a veteran journalist who writes about history, lifestyles, travel, and real estate. He is the author of three books, including Five for Freedom. The African American Soldiers in John Brown's Army and Chesapeake Country, a photo book on the Chesapeake Bay region. Meyer has also been widely published in magazines and was for many years a reporter and editor at the Washington Post. Since leaving the Post in 2004, Meyer has garnered 15 awards for his work and has had more than 50 bylines in The New York Times. His first journalism job was as Washington bureau librarian for the old New York Herald Tribune, where he got to tag along with a White House reporter and watch the 1964 Civil Rights Act being signed into law.

William B. Meyer’s essay on how the dismal swamps of the nineteenth century became the priceless wetlands of the twentieth appeared in the May/June issue.

Danny Meyer is the proprietor of some of New York’s most popular restaurants, among them Union Square Café, Gramercy Tavern, and Eleven Madison Park.

Ralph O. Meyer is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Kentucky and earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of North Carolina. He did experimental research at the University of Arizona and Argonne National Laboratory, and his main career was in technical work for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. For more than 30 years, he studied and wrote about the history and development of the telephone. He writes a technical column for Singing Wires, the journal of Telephone Collectors International, and for the past few years he has been working with North Carolina State University on telephone-related design topics.

Larry L. Meyer is former editor of Westways and Colorado magazines and the author of Shadow of a Continent: The American West in 1776.

John A. Meyer, M.D., is a professor of thoracic surgery at the State University of New York’s Health Science Center in Syracuse and is the author of Lung Cancer Chronicles , published in 1990 by the Rutgers University Press.

David Michaelis is an author and biographer whose work includes national bestsellers such as N. C. Wyeth (Alfred A. Knopf; Harper Perennial), which won the 1999 Ambassador Book Award for Biography, and Schulz and Peanuts (Harper; Harper Perennial), a National Book Critics Circle Best Recommended Book. His most recent book is Eleanor, a breakthrough portrait of America's longest-serving first lady. David Michaelis grew up in Cambridge, Mass., and Washington, D. C., and was educated at Concord Academy and Princeton University. He lives in Westchester County, N. Y., with his family.

—James W. Michaels is the editor of Forbes magazine.

Debra Michals is a journalist and Ph.D. candidate in American history at New York University.