Robert Van Norden Hine Jr. (26 April 1921, Los Angeles – 27 March 2015,

Irvine, California Irvine () is a Planned community, master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on ...

) was an American memoirist, historical novelist, and history professor who wrote several books. His 1993 memoir ''Second Sight'' recounts his experience of becoming blind at age 50 and partially recovering his sight 15 years later with the benefit of a high-risk operation. He grew up in Beverly Hills, where his father was a real estate developer. In high school, Robert V. Hine developed severe juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. He was hospitalized for six weeks to undergo intensive therapy but graduated on schedule from high school. He started college at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

(UCLA) but withdrew after he began to have hemorrhages in both eyes. The hemorrhages resulted from uveitis caused by his rheumatoid arthritis. As he grew older, the uveitis made removing his cataracts too risky. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1948 from Pomona College and a Ph.D. in history in 1952 from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

. 1949 as a graduate student, he married Shirley McChord (1920–1996), whom he had met when they were students at UCLA. As his eyesight deteriorated, she became his reader and research assistant. After graduating from Yale he published in 1953 his first book and spent a year as a fellow at the Huntington Library in

San Marino, California San Marino is a residential city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. It was incorporated on April 25, 1913. At the 2010 census the population was 13,147. The city is one of the wealthiest places in the nation in terms of househol ...

. From 1954 to 1990 he was a faculty member of the history department of the

University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban distr ...

. There he was the chair of the department from 1962 to 1967. He was a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic years 1957–1958 and 1967–1968. Upon his death in 2015, he was survived by a daughter and a grandson.

Selected publications

* "continuously in print to this day" * * *, 2d ed. 1984 * * * * * *with

John Mack Faragher John Mack Faragher (born Phoenix, Arizona) is an American historian. Life Born in 1945, he was raised in southern California, the oldest of eight children. Several of his siblings have been in the music business, including Danny Faragher, Jimmy ...

: * *with John Mack Faragher: * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hine, Robert V. 1921 births 2015 deaths Pomona College alumni Yale University alumni University of California, Irvine faculty 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers American memoirists Blind writers Blind scholars and academics Historians of the American West Historians of California 20th-century American male writers American blind people American writers with disabilities