Joseph Ellis

Joseph J. Ellis (1943- ) is a Pulitzer Prize - winning professor of history at Mount Holyoke College.

Background

He received his B.A. from the College of William and Mary, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University. He served in the army and also taught at West Point until 1972 when he joined the faculty at Mount Holyoke.

Books

George Washington, 2004.
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, 2002.
After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture, 2002.
Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams, 2001.
What Did the Declaration Declare? (Historians at Work), 1999.
American Sphinx : The Character of Thomas Jefferson, 1998.
School for soldiers: West Point and the profession of arms, 1974.
The New England mind in transition;: Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, 1696-1772, 1973.

Awards

2001 Pulitzer Prize in History for Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation ^*
1997 National Book Award winner for American Sphinx:The Character of Thomas Jefferson.

Controversy

Ellis became the subject of controversy when the Boston Globe revealed in an article published on June 18, 2001 that he had exaggerated his involvement in the Vietnam War (he served in uniform in America but did not go to Vietnam as he had claimed to students and to the media).

Ellis acknowledged the mistake in the June 19, 2001 issue of the Boston Globe and in August issued a public apology ^*. He was suspended for the 2001-2002 academic year without pay from his teaching position at Mount Holyoke and lost his endowed chair until further review ^*.

Scholarship

As a result of this controversy, Ellis' scholarship underwent peer review: "one of the effects of the scandal was to turn microscopic attention on all Ellis's books and none of these examinations turned up errors or misstatements." ^*.

Reviewers

Reviewers generally praise Ellis's writing for being both insightful and accessible.

Brent Staples, The New York Times Book Review, commented:

Joseph J. Ellis's American Sphinx is a brief and elegant return to Monticello. Mr. Ellis...is a remarkably clear writer, mercifully free of both the groveling and the spirit of attack that have dominated the subject in the past....American Sphinx is fresh and uncluttered but rich in historical context ^*.

Joyce Appleby, Washington Post Book World commented:

In lesser hands the fractious disputes and hysterical rhetoric of these contentious nation-builders might come across as hyperbolic pettiness. Ellis knows better, and he unpacks the real issues for his readers, revealing the driving assumptions and riveting fears that animated Americans' first encounter with the organized ideologies and interests we call parties ^*

Gordon S. Wood, The New Republic commented:

Everyone keeps wondering why over the past decade or so there have been so many books on the Founders, that remarkable generation of men who led the American Revolution and framed the Constitution. Joseph J. Ellis is surely one of the explanations: he has been a one-man historical machine...Ellis has entered the ranks of that tiny group of popular historians, including David McCullough, Walter Isaacson, and Ron Chernow, who sell copies of their books in the tens and even hundreds of thousands ^*.