author
Samuel Peter Orth
1873–1922
A historian and political scientist with a gift for explaining public life, he wrote clearly about immigration, government, and American history in the early twentieth century. His work blends scholarship with an eye for the forces shaping everyday civic life.
4 Audiobooks
Our Foreigners: A Chronicle of Americans in the Making
by Samuel Peter Orth
The Boss and the Machine: A Chronicle of the Politicians and Party Organization
by Samuel Peter Orth
The Armies of Labor: A Chronicle of the Organized Wage-Earners
by Samuel Peter Orth
Socialism and Democracy in Europe
by Samuel Peter Orth
About the author
Born in Capiac, Michigan, in 1873, Samuel Peter Orth became an American educator, lawyer, lecturer, historian, and author. He studied at Oberlin College, then pursued law and political science at the University of Michigan, building the academic background that shaped his writing on government and public affairs.
Orth taught political science and public law at Buchtel College in Akron before joining Cornell University, where he later held the Goldwin Smith Professorship of Political Science. Along the way, he also took part in Frederick A. Cook's Greenland expedition in 1894, an unusual early adventure for a scholar who would go on to focus mainly on politics, institutions, and history.
He is remembered for books such as Our Foreigners: A Chronicle of Americans in the Making and for his wider writing on administration, public law, and American civic development. He died in 1922, leaving behind work that helped general readers understand how immigration, government, and national life were changing in the United States.