Eric Foner

Eric Foner is a historian of the Civil War, Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century United States history. Give Me Liberty! organizes a broad national survey around the changing meanings and limits of American freedom, connecting political institutions with social movements and contested ideas of belonging. W. W. Norton describes it as a leading United States history textbook and has developed it through multiple full, brief, and Seagull editions. Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, where his record also includes museum curation and leadership of major historical associations. His books The Fiery Trial and The Second Founding extend the same attention to emancipation, constitutional change, and the unfinished consequences of Reconstruction.