Willard Sterne Randall

Willard Sterne Randall, the Distinguished Scholar in History at Champlain College, has written twelve books. Between his careers as an author and investigative journalist, Randall received the National Magazine Award for Public Service from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, the Hillman Prize, the Loeb Award and three Pulitzer Prize nominations.

His books include A Little Revenge: Benjamin Franklin & His Son (1984), Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (1990), Thomas Jefferson: A Life (1993), Alexander Hamilton: A Life (2003), and Ethan Allen: His Life and Times (2011), to name a few.

Articles by this Author

Ethan Allen’s Ill-Fated March on Canada, Fall 2011 | Vol. 61, No. 2

A new look at a famous Revolutionary figure questions whether history’s long-standing judgment is accurate.

First Encounters, Spring 2009 | Vol. 59, No. 1

The journeys 400 years ago of a French and Dutch explorer would forever alter the history of North America.

March on Quebec, Fall 2008 | Vol. 58, No. 5

Thomas Jefferson Takes a Vacation, July/August 1996 | Vol. 47, No. 4

DURING THIS TRIP, HE GAVE THE NEW nation a new industry, wrote a proto-guide to New England inns and taverns, (probably) did some secret politicking, discovered a town that lived up to his hopes for a democratic society, scrutinized everything from rattlesnakes to rum manufacture, and, in the process, pretty much invented the summer vacation itself.

Why Benedict Arnold Did It, September/October 1990 | Vol. 41, No. 6

To the end of his life, America’s most notorious traitor believed that he was a primary hero of the Revolution.

Featured Authors

Acheson, Dean

Dean Acheson (1893-1971) was an attorney and statesman who served as Secretary of State from 1949 to 1953 under President Harry Truman. A key architect of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, Acheson stressed the importance of multilateral organizations in the fight against totalitarianism. Prior to his service in the Truman Administration, Acheson clerked for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, worked at Washington law firm Covington & Burling, and served as Undersecretary of the Treasury for one year under President Franklin Roosevelt.

Ambrose, Stephen E.

Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) was a historian and professor who wrote on military history, presidential history, and American expansion and foreign policy. Ambrose has been praised for his biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, and for helping to galvanize interest in World War II.

Becker, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Becker is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books. Her history When The War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge won accolades from the Robert F. Kennedy book award, while her recent biography of female conflict journalists You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War won the 2022 Sperber Book Prize and Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize. She is also the author of America’s Vietnam War: A Narrative History for young adults.

Bird, Kai

Kai Bird is a historian and Executive Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is best known for writing about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, US-Middle East relations and biographies of political figures. Bird is the author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Blight, David W.

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. Recently, Blight has written A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize.