Edward Ayers

Edward Ayers has been named National Professor of the Year, received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama at the White House, won the Bancroft Prize and Beveridge Prize in American history, and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He is one of the cohosts for BackStory, a popular podcast about American history. He is Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and president emeritus at the University of Richmond. His major publications include The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction (1992), In the Presence of Mine Enemies: Civil War in the Heart of America (2003), and The Thin Light of Freedom: Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America (2017).