Adams, James Truslow

Related Category: Historians, U.S.: Biographies

(trŭ´slō), 1878–1949, American historian, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. The Founding of New England (1921), which brought him the Pulitzer Prize in history for 1922, was followed by Revolutionary New England, 1691–1776 (1923) and New England in the Republic, 1776–1850 (1926). Among the best of his many books are Provincial Society, 1690–1763 (Vol. III in the “History of American Life” series, 1927) and The Epic of America (1931), which was widely translated. The Adams Family (1930) and Henry Adams (1933) were books on the famous Massachusetts clan, to which he was not related. Adams spent much of his time in London as a representative of his publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. He was editor in chief of Dictionary of American History (6 vol., 1940; rev. ed. 1942), Atlas of American History (1943), and Album of American History (4 vol., 1944–48), three valuable reference works. Some of his later writings reflect his obvious distaste for the New Deal.

See biography by A. Nevins (1968).