J.A. James

J.A. James was the publication form used by James Alton James, an American historian and educator whose career joined university scholarship with civic instruction. Our Government, written with Albert Hart Sanford, explains local, state, and national institutions through their practical operation and historical development. Charles Scribner's Sons issued the textbook in the early twentieth century, and editions adapted its material for particular states. James joined Northwestern University as a history professor in 1897, chaired the department for more than two decades, and served as the first dean of its Graduate School from 1917 to 1931. His research centered on the American revolutionary era and the Midwest, while his teaching work extended to textbooks produced with Sanford. That combination of archival scholarship and classroom experience gave the civics book its emphasis on how public institutions actually conduct their affairs.