Daniel Czitrom

Daniel Czitrom is Emeritus Professor of History on the Ford Foundation at Mount Holyoke College, where he taught for 41 years. He is the author most recently of New York Exposed: The Gilded Age Police Scandal That Launched the Progressive Era (Oxford, 2016; pb, 2018). Mike Wallace, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History for Gotham described the book as “a walk on the seamy side of Gotham in the 1890s, peopled with brutal cops, corrupt politicians, conniving businessmen, evangelical zealots, exploited immigrants, earnest reformers, and sensational media…A tour-de-force of investigation and interpretation.” Novelist Kevin Baker said of New York Exposed, “Careful and rigorous history, it nonetheless reads like a gripping police procedural filled with some of the most colorful and outrageous characters of our past.” Czitrom’s previous book, Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn of the Century New York (with Bonnie Yochelson, New Press, 2008; University of Chicago Press pb., 2014) offered a fresh look at the Progressive era social reformer, journalist, and pioneer photographer who publicized the conditions of the desperately poor in New York. The book received wide attention, including reviews n the NY Times, LA Times, and Chicago Tribune, and it was the subject of a special feature by Robert Siegel on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered (June 30, 2008). Sam Roberts in the NY Times praised the book as, “an evocative reminder both of one unrelenting individual’s ability to make a difference and the relevance of his revelations to the painfully familiar problems we face today.”

Czitrom is also the author of Media and the American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan (University of North Carolina Press, 1982; pb 1984 and still in print), which received the First Books Award from the American Historical Association and has been translated into Spanish, Chinese, and Korean. He is co-author of Out of Many: A History of the American People (Pearson, 9th ed., 2020), a best-selling US History college textbook.

Czitrom has been deeply engaged with bringing history to wider audiences beyond the academy. From 2011-13 he served as the historical advisor for Copper, an original dramatic television series set in Civil War-era New York and broadcast over BBC America. He has appeared as a featured on-camera commentator for numerous documentary film projects, most recently in Walter Winchell: The Power of Gossip (PBS/American Masters, 2020). Previous appearances include New York: A Documentary Film (PBS, 1999); American Photography: A Century of Images (PBS, 1999); The Great Transatlantic Cable (PBS/American Experience, 2005); The Rise and Fall of Penn Station (PBS/American Experience, 2014); and Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People (PBS/American Masters, 2019.

In 2012 Czitrom was elected to the Society of American Historians. Based at Columbia University, the Society promotes literary distinction in historical writing. He recently completed two terms on its Executive Board.