author
John Bach McMaster
1852–1932
A pioneering American historian, he helped shift attention from famous leaders to the everyday lives of ordinary people. His best-known work, the multivolume A History of the People of the United States, brought social history to a wide audience.
2 Audiobooks
A Brief History of the United States
by John Bach McMaster
A School History of the United States
by John Bach McMaster
About the author
Born in Brooklyn on June 29, 1852, John Bach McMaster first trained as an engineer and graduated from the College of the City of New York. He worked as a civil engineer, then taught civil engineering at Princeton before turning fully to history.
In 1883 he joined the University of Pennsylvania, where he became a longtime professor of American history. He was especially known for using newspapers and other everyday sources to show how ordinary Americans lived, worked, and argued about politics, an approach that made his history writing feel broader and more human than many earlier accounts.
McMaster is remembered above all for his eight-volume A History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War, a major work that helped establish social history in the United States. He died on May 24, 1932, in Darien, Connecticut.