Joel Tyler Headley, the most prolific American popular historian of the nineteenth century, both influenced public taste and reflected the attitudes of the Northeastern establishment. He produced thirty-odd biographies, histories, and travel books during his career. The books that made him famous were Napoleon and His Marshals (1846), which went through fifty editions by 1861, and Washington and His Generals (1847). Both are now considered superficial. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, however, his The Great Riots of New York, 1712 to 1873 (1873) is still considered a valuable document of social history--though for what it reveals about the American upper class, not the rioters.

Born in Walton, Delaware County, New York, in 1813, Headley was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, Isaac Headley, whose family had emigrated from England in 1655, and Irene Benedict Headley, also of an old family. Considering his later education, travel, and the speed with which he launched a...