Ronald Lewis Steel (born March 25, 1931) is an American writer, historian, and professor. He is the author of the definitive biography of Walter Lippmann.

Biography

Ronald Steel was born in 1931 in Morris, Illinois outside of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. He earned his

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

degree in Political Science and English from

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

(1953) and a

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

degree in political economy from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

(1955). He served in the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

and was a diplomat in the

United States Foreign Service The United States Foreign Service is the primary personnel system used by the diplomatic service of the United States federal government, under the aegis of the United States Department of State. It consists of over 13,000 professionals carryi ...

. He is the author of ''Walter Lippmann and the American Century'', the definitive biography of Lippman. For this book, he was awarded the 1980 National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction, a

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

,"National Book Awards – 1982"
National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-17. ''Walter Lippman'' won the 1982 award for paperback "Autobiography/Biography".
From 1980 to 1983 in National Book Award history there were dual hardcover and paperback awards in most categories, and several nonfiction subcategories including General Nonfiction. Most of the paperback award-winners were reprints, including this one. the Bancroft Prize, and the

Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History The ''Los Angeles Times'' Book Prize for History, established in 1980, is a category of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Works are eligible during the year of their first US publication in English, though they may be written originally in languag ...

. The book was also nominated for the

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

in Biography. He was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1973. Steel is a Professor Emeritus of International Relations, History, and Journalism at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

. Before teaching at USC, he taught at

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 ...

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

Wellesley College Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial g ...

, Dartmouth College, George Washington University, UCLA, and Princeton University. Later, Steel wrote for '' The New Republic'' in the 1980s. He has also written for the ''

Atlantic Monthly ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

'', '' The New York Times'' and '' The New York Review of Books''.

Works

* ''U.S. Foreign Trade Policy'', 1962 * ''Italy'', 1963 * ''The End of Alliance: America and the Future of Europe'', 1964 * ''North Africa'', 1967 *
Pax Americana
', 1967 * ''Imperialists and other Heroes: A chronicle of the American Empire'', 1971 * ''Walter Lippmann and the American century'', 1980 * ''Temptations of a Superpower'', 1995 * ''In Love with Night: the American romance with Robert Kennedy'', 2000

Notes

References

External links

* * * 1931 births Living people 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Bancroft Prize winners National Book Award winners The New Republic people Northwestern University alumni Harvard University alumni University of Southern California faculty People from Morris, Illinois Historians from Illinois Historians from California American male non-fiction writers {{US-historian-stub