Ronald C. White

Ronald C. White is the author of two New York Times bestselling presidential biographies: A. Lincoln: A Biography and American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant. The winner of the 2023 Richard Nelson Current Award of Achievement for his work on Lincoln, White is widely recognized as a public intellectual commenting on American history, politics, and culture. He engages audiences about some of the nation’s prominent historical figures in relation to our present tumultuous politics. He has lectured at the White House, been interviewed on the PBS NewsHour and NPR, and, at the invitation of the Library of Congress, has spoken to members of Congress on “Leadership Lessons from Lincoln and Grant.” He has written op-ed essays for The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.  White has lectured on Lincoln in England, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and New Zealand.

White’s first book on Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2002.  His second book, The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller.

Lincoln: A Biography was published in 2009, the year of the Lincoln bicentennial. USA Today said, “If you read one book about Lincoln, make it A. Lincoln.”  It won a coveted Christopher Award which salutes books “that affirm the highest values of the human spirit.”  Lincoln author Harold Holzer wrote, “Each generation requires its own masterly one-volume Lincoln biography, and Ronald C. White has crowned the bicentennial year with an instant classic for the twenty-first century.” The book was honored as one of the best books of 2009 by the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, History Book Club, and Barnes & Noble.

A long-awaited second presidential biography, American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant was published to universal praise in 2016.  Offering a portrait that reshapes out understanding of an American hero, it won the William Henry Seward Award for “Excellence in Civil War Biography.”  Pulitzer-prize winning author T. J. Stiles wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “White delineates Grant’s virtues better than any author before.”  The  Wall Street Journal wrote, “Ronald White has restored Ulysses S. Grant to his proper place in history with a biography whose breadth and tone suit the man perfectly. Like Grant himself, this book will have staying power.”  The Chicago Tribune called the biography “Superb . . . illuminating, inspiring and deeply moving.”  The Boston Globe called it “Magisterial.”

His next book, On Great Fields, delves into these contradictions through definitive, cradle-to-death biography of General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who is now familiar to millions from Michael Shaara’s now-classic novel of the Civil War, The Killer Angels, and Ken Burns’s classic miniseries The Civil War. This gripping, impeccably researched portrait illuminates one of the most admired but least known figures in our nation’s bloodiest conflict, from his upbringing in rural Maine to his tenacious, empathetic military leadership and his influential post-war public service.

Ronald C. White, an authority on Lincoln’s eloquence, is himself an eloquent speaker–  attested by multiple audiences.  Venues that have invited him to speak include: Library of Congress, Society of the Four Arts [Palm Beach], Library Company of Philadelphia, The Carter Center in Atlanta, the Literary and Cultural Society of the Southwest [Arizona], the White House Historical Society, the World Affairs Council of Dallas, as well as keynoting at gatherings of lawyers and physicians.  He has spoken at more than forty American colleges and universities, as well as Oxford University, the Free University of Berlin, and the National University of Mexico.

His much anticipated new book, Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President, offers a revelatory glimpse into the mind and soul of our sixteenth president through his private notes to himself, explored together for the first time.  These are notes Lincoln never expected anyone to read, put into context by a writer who has spent his life studying Lincoln’s life and words. In 2022, the Civil War Round Table of New York awarded Lincoln in Private with the Benjamin Barondess Award.

An honors graduate of UCLA and Princeton Theological Seminary, Ronald C. White earned a Ph.D. in Religion and History from Princeton University. He lives with his wife Cynthia in Pasadena, California.

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Ron White