Thomas Kessner is an American historian, a Distinguished Professor at City University of New York, and an author.

Education

Kessner is a graduate of Brooklyn College (1963) and earned his doctorate at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 1975 with distinction.

Career

He was appointed as distinguished professor at The Graduate Center in 2005. His special areas of interest are American urban and social history and the history of New York City. He has served as a consultant to the New York City Board of Education, the

Ellis Island Ellis Island is a federally owned island in New York Harbor, situated within the U.S. states of New York and New Jersey, that was the busiest immigrant inspection and processing station in the United States. From 1892 to 1954, nearly 12 mil ...

Museum, the

New-York Historical Society The New-York Historical Society is an American history museum and library in New York City, along Central Park West between 76th and 77th Streets, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The society was founded in 1804 as New York's first museum ...

, the

Museum of the City of New York A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

, and many other scholarly and professional institutions. He was also an associate editor for

The Encyclopedia of New York City ''The Encyclopedia of New York City'' is a reference book on New York City, New York. Edited by Columbia University history professor Kenneth T. Jackson, the book was first published in 1995 by the New-York Historical Society and Yale Univers ...

and has directed more than half a dozen NEH summer seminars for college and high school teachers.

Selected works

Books

*''The Flight of the Century:

Charles A. Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris, a distance o ...

and the Rise of American Aviation'' (2010) *''Capital City: New York City and the Men Behind America’s Rise to Economic Dominance, 1860–1900'' (2003) *'' Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York'' (1989) *''The Golden Door'' (1977), a study of immigrant life and economic mobility in New York City. co-authored with Betty Boyd Caroli *''Today's Immigrants, Their Stories: A New Look at the Newest Americans'' (1983)

Articles

*"The New Deal", ''Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History''

Awards

Kessner’s work has garnered awards and fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers City University of New York faculty Columbia University alumni Brooklyn College alumni American male non-fiction writers {{US-historian-stub