# David Nasaw

David Nasaw (born July 18, 1945) is an American author, biographer and historian who specializes in the cultural, social and business history of early 20th Century America. Nasaw is on the faculty of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he is the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Professor of History.
In addition to writing numerous scholarly and popular books, he has written for publications such as the Columbia Journalism Review, American Historical Review, American Heritage, Dissent, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The London Review of Books, and Condé Nast Traveler.
Nasaw has appeared in several documentaries, including The American Experience, 1996, and two episodes of the History Channel's April 2006 miniseries 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America: "The Homestead Strike" and "The Assassination of President McKinley". He is cited extensively in the US and British media as an expert on the history of popular entertainment and the news media, and as a critic of American philanthropy.

## Early life and education

David George Nasaw was born on July 18, 1945, in Cortland, New York, the oldest son of lawyer Joshua Nasaw (1909–1970) and Beatrice Kaplan (1917–2010), an elementary school teacher. Nasaw is the older brother of Jonathan Lewis Nasaw (b. August 26, 1947), the prolific author of at least nine thrillers; and Elizabeth Perl Nasaw (May 29, 1956 – February 28, 2004), who as "Elizabeth Was" (later "Liz Was" and finally "Lyx Ish") was a poet and publisher of avant-garde magazines, and the cofounder of Xexoxial Editions and Dreamtime Village in West Lima, Wisconsin.
Nasaw grew up in Roslyn, New York, and, after a year studying in Denmark as an exchange student, graduated from Roslyn High School in 1963. Nasaw graduated from Bucknell University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1967, before enrolling in Columbia University, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in 1972 for his dissertation "Jean-Paul Sartre: Apprenticeship in History (1925–45)".
While studying at Columbia University, for more than two years from 1970 Nasaw was one of two full-time teachers in the Elizabeth Cleaners Street School, a short-lived experimental alternative free high school founded in New York City. The experience gave rise to the book "Starting Your Own High School," written by the students and edited by Nasaw.

## Career

Nasaw began teaching history at the College of Staten Island in 1978. During the 1987–1988 academic year, he was as a Fulbright Professor of American Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Nasaw has been on the doctoral faculty of the City University of New York's Graduate Center since 1990, where he also served as chairman. He was director of the CUNY Graduate Center's Center for the Humanities, and the chairman of the advisory board of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the university.
Nasaw is a founder of the Radical History Review.
Although he has published three biographies, Nasaw describes himself as an academic historian, rather than a biographer. A historian, he says, "sweeps away the fables, the myths, the stories" and places scholarly subjects "in time and over time", while for biographers, the organization of the work is laid out in advance. "Writing history is not an art but a craft," Nasaw has said. "It requires interpretation and fifty sources and integrating and assembling this material into a story told by an individual voice."

## Personal life

Since June 10, 1978, Nasaw has been married to Dinitia Smith, a novelist, Emmy award-winning filmmaker, and journalist, who worked as a correspondent for The New York Times for 12 years. They are the parents of twin sons: Peter Caleb Nasaw and journalist Daniel Allen Nasaw, born in 1980.

## Awards

* 2013 – Finalist, Pulitzer Prize for biography
* 2007 – Finalist, Pulitzer Prize for biography
* 2006 – American History Book Prize
* 2006 – New-York Historical Society American History Book Prize
* 2001 – Bancroft Prize
* 2001 – Ambassador Book Award
* 2001 – J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
* 2001 – Ann M. Sperber Biography Award for Journalism