Bailyn, Bernard

Bailyn, Bernard (bā'lin) [key], 1922–, U.S. historian, b. Hartford, Conn. After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1953, he taught (1953–93; emeritus 1993–) U.S. colonial history there, becoming full professor in 1961. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice: first for his book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), which challenged long-standing interpretations of the causes of the American Revolution, and then for Voyagers to the West (1986). His other books include The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (1955), Education in the Forming of American Society (1960), The Origins of American Politics (1968), The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (1974), The Peopling of British North America (1986), On the Teaching and Writing of History (1994), and To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders (2003).