Alfred Steinberg

Who was Alfred Steinberg?

Alfred Steinberg was an American historian and biographer who, during his prolific career, wrote 20 books on American history and 200 magazine articles for Reader's Digest, Collier's Weekly and Harper's, among others.

His books included biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt, Presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson, Senator Tom Connally, House Speaker Sam Rayburn, the first ten Presidents of the United States, and the political bosses who ruled the American political machines that dominated in the 1920s and 1930s. His twelve books for the Lives to Remember Series included biographies of Herbert Hoover, James Madison, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, Douglas MacArthur, the Kennedy brothers, Admiral Richard Byrd and Daniel Webster. His magazine articles told about not only the Washington political landscape but nearly every aspect of the American experience.

Steinberg was born in 1917 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He entered the University of Minnesota at 16 and graduated with both undergraduate and master's degrees in Political Science and Economics. He moved to Washington, D.C. in 1940 with his wife also a University of Minnesota graduate to work for the Federal government.