Curated playlist
Jewish American historians
- Elizabeth TaylorElizabeth Taylor was born on the 27th of February 1932 in Hampstead Garden Suburb, northwest London, in a family home called Heathwood. She died on the 23rd of March 2011 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Between those two…
- David A. BellDavid Avrom Bell was born in New York City in 1961, into a family that thought seriously about ideas for a living. His father was the sociologist Daniel Bell. His mother, Pearl Kazin Bell, was a literary critic and the sister of the…
- David LandesDavid Saul Landes spent decades at Harvard asking a question that made many scholars uncomfortable: why did some nations grow rich while others stayed poor? Born on the 29th of April 1924, he lived long enough to watch that question travel…
- Gabor BorittGabor Boritt was born in 1940 to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary. The Nazis forced his family into a single room within a hospital on the edge of the ghetto. He played on floors stained with blood during those early years. His…
- Shelby FooteShelby Dade Foote Jr. was born on the 17th of November 1916 in Greenville, Mississippi. His father worked for Armour and Company, moving the family from Greenville to Jackson and then Vicksburg before settling in Mobile, Alabama. When…
- Stephen GreenblattStephen Greenblatt once recalled the moment he realized the term "New Historicism" had taken on a life of its own. When he heard that American universities were advertising academic positions specifically requesting experts in the field,…
- Claudia GoldinClaudia Dale Goldin was born in the Bronx, New York City on the 14th of May 1946. Her father Leon Goldin worked as a data processing manager at Burlington Industries while her mother Lucille Rosansky Goldin served as principal of Public…
- Eric FonerEric Foner, born on the 7th of February 1943 in New York City, is the historian that college professors reach for most often. According to the Open Syllabus Project, Foner is the single most frequently cited author on college syllabi for…
- Joel MokyrJoel Mokyr was born on the 26th of July 1946 in Leiden, Netherlands, into a family of Dutch Jews who had survived the Holocaust. His father Salomon Mok died of cancer when Mokyr was just one year old. Nine years later, he crossed the…
- Walter IsaacsonWalter Seff Isaacson was born on the 20th of May, 1952, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the city that would leave its mark on nearly every chapter of his life. His father was an electrical and mechanical engineer; his mother a real estate…