Eric Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, and one of the country's most prominent historians. He is one of only two persons to serve as president of the three major professional organizations: the Organization of American Historians, American Historical Association, and Society of American Historians, and one of a handful to have won the Bancroft and Pulitzer Prizes in the same year. His best-known books are: Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War; Tom Paine and Revolutionary America; Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (winner, among other awards, of the Bancroft Prize, Parkman Prize, and Los Angeles Times Book Award); and The Story of American Freedom. His most recent book, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery was awarded the Bancroft Prize, Pulitzer Prize for History, and The Lincoln Prize.
