David S. Reynolds

David S. Reynolds is a distinguished literary critic, historian, and biographer whose work explores the intersection of culture, biography, society, and politics. He is a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he teaches in the programs of English, History, Comparative Literature, and Biography and Memoir.

Reynolds earned his B.A. magna cum laude from Amherst College and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Over the course of his career, he has taught at Northwestern University, Barnard College, New York University, Rutgers University, Baruch College, and the Sorbonne-Paris III.

Author or editor of seventeen books, Reynolds has received numerous honors, including the Bancroft Prize, Lincoln Prize, Christian Gauss Award, Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award, and Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. His work has been featured on PBS, NPR, C-SPAN, and in publications including The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic.

His scholarship is known for placing figures such as Abraham Lincoln, John Brown, Walt Whitman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe within their historical and cultural contexts, while also highlighting overlooked writers and the power of public opinion in shaping American history.

Learn more at David S. Reynolds’s official website.