Joseph Ellis

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Joseph Ellis is a historian whose academic interest is in the field of early American history. He has written several books about the lives of leaders of the American Revolution which are written in a readable popular style. His books offer new insights into the lives and characters of such familiar historical figures as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Aaron Burr.

Joseph Ellis was born on July 18, 1943 in Washington, D.C. He graduated from the College of William and Mary, and received an M.A. (1965) and Ph.D. (1967) from Yale University. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve from 1965-1972. He has held teaching positions at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY, and at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA. He has received numerous awards and fellowships for teaching and for writing, including a Pulitzer Prize for history for Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation.

Ellis came into some controversy regarding his personal life. In 2001, he was suspended from his teaching position at Mount Holyoke without pay after it was learned that he had fabricated and embellished various aspects of his personal history, in particular, that he claimed to have served in combat in the vicinity of My Lai, Vietnam just prior to the massacre when he had, in fact, been teaching at West Point at the time. Critics felt that if he had altered his own personal history, then his historical judgments could also be unreliable and his integrity in his professional life could also be flawed. He resumed his teaching position in 2002.

Ellis’s books include The Passionate Sage: the Character and Legacy of John Adams, American Sphinx: the Character of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson: Genius of Liberty (Editor), Founding Brothers: the Revolutionary Generation, His Excellency George Washington and American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic. He has also published many articles in scholarly journals. His work was featured in the Library of Congress National Book Festival in 2005, and he has written web content for the Library of Congress American Memory Project.

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