born May 20, 1890, Camp Point, Ill., U.S.
died March 5, 1971, Menlo Park, Calif.
U.S. historian.
He worked nearly 20 years as a journalist before joining the faculty at Columbia University (1928–58). His best-known works include biographies of U.S. political and industrial figures, including Grover Cleveland (1932, Pulitzer Prize) and Hamilton Fish (1936, Pulitzer Prize), and his eight-volume history of the American Civil War, comprising Ordeal of the Union (1947), The Emergence of Lincoln (1950), and The War for Union (1959–71). In 1948 he inaugurated at Columbia the first oral history program in the U.S.