Andrew Delbanco

Andrew Delbanco is an American literary critic, cultural historian, and author. Born in 1952, he is the Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia University and a MacArthur Fellow. He has written widely on American literature, religious history, and higher education, and is one of the most respected public intellectuals in American academic life. Delbanco's books include The Puritan Ordeal (1989), Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter Now (1997), Melville: His World and Work (2005), College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be (2012), and The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War (2018). The War Before the War is an account of the Fugitive Slave Act and its role in polarising antebellum America and precipitating the Civil War. It won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction in 2019 and the Lionel Trilling Book Award. Delbanco has received the Great Teacher Award from Columbia University and other teaching honours, in addition to his many scholarly distinctions. He lives in New York City.