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 twentieth-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, The 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 a 1996 episode of The American Experience, as well as two episodes of the History Channel 2006 miniseries 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America, "The Homestead Strike", and "The Assassination of President McKinley".

Nasaw grew up in Roslyn, New York, and, after a year studying in Denmark as an exchange student, was graduated from Roslyn High School in 1963. Nasaw received a bachelor of arts from Bucknell University in 1967, before enrolling in Columbia University,

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's next teaching experience was that of 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 Graduate Center since 1990,

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."

During an interview of Nasaw regarding his book entitled, The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II, historian Julian Zelizer stated that Nasaw's publication changed forever, how the generation of veterans returning from World War II would be viewed.

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

Nasaw is the older brother of Jonathan Lewis Nasaw (b. August 26, 1947), the prolific author of at more than nine thrillers. His sister, 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.

Awards 2013 – Finalist, Pulitzer Prize for biography 2007 – Finalist, Pulitzer Prize for biography 2001 – Bancroft Prize 2001 – Ambassador Book Award 2001 – Ann M. Sperber Biography Award for Journalism