Joseph Allan Nevins was one of the most versatile, probably the greatest, and certainly the most prolific of twentieth-century American historians. In a long career as journalist, teacher, speaker, and writer, Nevins authored over a score of significant books, wrote about fifty others of lesser importance, edited a large number of useful works, wrote an unknown number of articles (perhaps a thousand by one estimate), reshaped historians' understandings of some major topics in American history, acted as a catalyst for several historical projects, trained hundreds of masters and doctoral students, and made the only major effort since World War II to provide Americans with a full-scale, balanced reinterpretation of their Civil War-Reconstruction era.

Nevins was not, however, an ivory tower academician. He worked for almost two decades as a journalist and did not enter academe until he was nearly forty. He maintained a healthy lifelong interest and involvement...