author
James Ford Rhodes
1848–1927
A self-made industrialist who turned to history after retiring young, he became one of the best-known American writers on the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. His sweeping historical works helped shape how many readers understood the United States in the nineteenth century.
1 Audiobook
Historical Essays
by James Ford Rhodes
About the author
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 1, 1848, James Ford Rhodes first built his fortune in the iron, coal, and steel business. After leaving business in the mid-1880s, he devoted himself to historical research and writing, focusing on the political and national crises that led to the Civil War and followed it.
Rhodes is best known for his multivolume History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, published across the 1890s and early 1900s, along with later works including History of the Civil War, 1861–1865. That Civil War history won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1918, confirming his place as a major popular historian of his time.
He was also active in the historical profession, serving as president of the American Historical Association. Rhodes died in Brookline, Massachusetts, on January 22, 1927, but his books remained influential for decades as ambitious narrative histories of nineteenth-century America.