Taylor, Alan (1955 - )

Genre: Non-Fiction - Scholarly

Historian Alan Taylor, born June 17, 1955, grew up in Windham, Maine and graduated from Colby College in 1977. He received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1986. Among his fellowships are the National Endowment for the Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Early American History and Culture at The College of William and Mary, plus fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the National Humanities Center, and the Huntington Library. Taylor has been a history professor at the University of California at Davis since 1994. Of special note is the annual UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement that was awarded to Taylor in 2002. The $30,000 prize is said to be the largest award of its type in the United States. At the award ceremony Taylor announced he was giving $20,000 of the prize money to the Roland Marchand Memorial Fund, named in memory of Marchand who taught 33 years at UC Davis, which provides support to graduate students in American history at UC Davis.

Selected Bibliogropahy

  • William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (1995),received Pulitzer, Bancroft, and Beveridge prizes; which explores the lives of Judge William Cooper and the novelist James Fenimore Cooper, who were father and son.
  • Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760-1820 1990 included in the Mirror of Maine.
  • American Colonies, (2001) the first of five volumes in The Penguin History of the United States. The book received the gold medal for nonfiction in the 71st California Book Awards.
  • The Civil War of 1812 : American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies, 2010.

Selected Resources