Historians and the Living Past - Softcover

Allan J. Lichtman received his PhD from Harvard University in 1973 with a specialty in modern American history and quantitative methods. He became an Assistant Professor of History at American University in 1973 and a Full Professor in 1980. He was the recipient of the Scholar/Teacher of the year award for 1992-93. He has published seven books and several hundred popular and scholarly articles. He has lectured in the US and internationally and provided commentary for major US and foreign networks and leading newspapers and magazines across the world. He has been an expert witness in more than 75 civil and voting rights cases. His book, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction. His prediction system, the Keys to the White House, has correctly predicted the outcomes of all US presidential elections since 1984.

"Historical study is a broadening and humanizing experience. We find it both humbling and inspiring to realize that life in our own times does not begin to exhaust the possibilities of human emotion, thought, imagination, and endeavor. History provides a glimpse of what people have thought and felt in times and places very different from our own. It reveals their successes and their failures, loves and hates. It portrays the splendor of past civilizations and records their decay and decline. History discloses the arrogance and greatness of rulers, the passions and audacity of revolutionaries, and the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. Finally, history helps us to understand our own identity in the present by giving us an understanding of how we came to be what we are."