Brandeis Magazine

I have known David Fischer since we both entered Johns Hopkins University as first-year graduate students in September 1958. At our first seminar together in Gilman Hall, sitting around an oak table where Frederick Jackson Turner, Woodrow Wilson and other famous Hopkins students had carved their initials (a practice severely frowned upon by our time), we began an intellectual journey of more than half a century, during which I have learned more history from David than from any other contemporary or any of our teachers.

David has a truly amazing fund of knowledge, ranging from medieval economic history to modern American cultural and social history, from New Zealand to French Canada, from the American Revolution to World War II, and more — topics about which he has taught courses at Brandeis and written important books. It is an unparalleled career of scholarly achievement.

James M. McPherson, Professor Emeritus of History at Princeton University, has written more than a dozen books about the Civil War, including the Pulitzer Prize winner “Battle Cry of Freedom” (1988).