Arthur L. Herman (born 1956) is a conservative American historian of Anglo-American history, but his 1984 Ph.D. dissertation at the Johns Hopkins University dealt with the political thought of early 17th-century French Huguenots. He often writes for National Review. In the 1990s he taught at George Mason University. Currently he is coordinator of the Western Heritage program at the Smithsonian Institution. His 2001 book on the Scottish Enlightenment, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, was a New York Times bestseller. His most recent work (to be published by Bantam in Summer 2008) is Gandhi and Churchill: the Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age.
Works
- The Idea Of Decline In Western History, Free Press, 1997.
- Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator, Free Press, 1999.
- How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It, Crown, 2001.
- To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, HarperCollins, 2004.
