Eric Foner

Who is Eric Foner?

Eric Foner is an American historian. On the faculty of the Department of History at Columbia University since 1982, he writes extensively on political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African American biography, Reconstruction, and historiography. Foner is the leading contemporary historian of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period, having written Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, winner of many prizes for history writing, and more than ten other books on the topic. In 2011, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, Foner's most recent book, was selected as the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, Lincoln Prize and the Bancroft Prize. Foner also won the Bancroft in 1989 for his book Reconstruction.

In 2000, he was elected president of the American Historical Association, succeeded by William Roger Louis.