Author and historian David Hackett Fischer to speak April 19

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. ? David Hackett Fischer, a Pulitzer-Prize winning historian at Brandeis University and author of the high acclaimed “Champlain’s Dream” (2008), will deliver the 36th Charles S. Grant Memorial Lecture. The lecture, titled “A War for Peace: Champlain and the Mohawk,” will take place in Dana Auditorium on Sunday, April 19, at 4 p.m. Dana is located in Sunderland Language Center on College Street (Route 125).

Fischer is the author of numerous well-received books, including is “The Revolution of American Conservatism”  (1965), “Historians’ Fallacies” (1970), “Growing Old in America” (1977), “Concord: The Social History of a New England Town” (1984), “Brookline: The Social History of a Suburban Town” (1986), and “Away, I’m Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement with James Kelly” (1993).

In 1989, “Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America” received the Saloutos Prize in Immigration and Social History. Several of his books, including “Paul Revere’s Ride” (1994), were selected by the History Book Club and the Book of the Month Club. “The Great Wave: Price Movements in Modern History” (1996) was named the Best Book of the Year in Economics and Business by The New York Times, and “Washington’s Crossing” (2004) won the Pulitzer Prize in History and was a National Book Award finalist.

His most recent book, “Champlain’s Dream,” was published last October. It quickly became a best seller and was named one of the Best Books of 2008 by The New York Times. Fischer currently is working on a comparative history of New Zealand and the United States, and a book on Afro-American Cultures in America.

Fischer is Earl Warren Professor and University Professor at Brandeis University. He began his teaching career at Brandeis in 1962 and has taught at Harvard University, the University of Washington, Seattle, and the University of Otago and University of Waikato in New Zealand. During 1985-1986 he held the Harmsworth Professorship in American History at Oxford University and in 1993 was elected a life member at Bodleian Library.

The Charles S. Grant Memorial Lecture commemorates the gifted and much loved teacher who was an esteemed scholar at Middlebury College in the 1950s until his death in 1961. Shortly thereafter, several colleagues and friends in the Middlebury community created a fund that eventually became large enough to establish an annual lectureship in American history as a tribute to him. Many prominent American historians of the past 35 years have delivered Grant lectures, including David McCullough, author of the best-selling biography “John Adams,” William E. Leuchtenburg, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., James McPherson, Robert Dallek, William H. Chafe, John Lewis Gaddis and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.

For more information, contact Middlebury College Professor of History Travis Jacobs at tjacobs@middlebury.edu or 802-758-2351.