James M. McPherson (1936- ) is an American Civil War historian and the George Henry Davis '86 Professor Emeritus of United States History at Princeton University. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for Battle Cry of Freedom, his most famous book. McPherson was named the 2000 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was the president of the American Historical Association in 2003 and is a member of the editorial board of Encyclopædia Britannica. In 2007, McPherson was the first individual to be awarded the $100,000 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military history.
Born in Valley City, North Dakota, he graduated from St. Peter High School in Minnesota. He graduated magna cum laude from Gustavus Adolphus College and received his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 1963. He and his wife reside in Princeton, New Jersey. For a link to Dr. McPherson’s appearance as the featured North Dakota author, go to http://www.prairiepublic.org/features/readnd
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