Stephen E. Atkins

Stephen Eugene Atkins (January 29, 1941 – March 26, 2010) was an American academic librarian and historian. After his graduation from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he was a political science subject specialist and was later the head of collection development at Sterling C. Evans Library at Texas A&M University until 1997, successively their associate university librarian for collection management and associate dean for collection management. Atkins wrote 10 books, mostly reference works on topics related to extremism and terrorism.

Early life and education Stephen Eugene Atkins was born in Columbia, Missouri, on January 29, 1941. His mother, Arletta Bragg, was an office worker, while his father Frank Atkins was a superintendent. In Atkins's youth he attended 13 different schools in 12 years in the states of Texas and South Carolina due to his family regularly traveling. He graduated from a high school in Mexico, Missouri.

He attended the University of Missouri, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in European history in 1963. He received his Master of Arts degree with honors in French history from the same school the next year. He began working to receive a PhD in French history from the University of Iowa, though this was interrupted by his service in the Vietnam War as a soldier in the United States Army for two years. He resumed his studies after his two years of service and received his PhD in 1976. From 1997 to 2003 he was their associate university librarian for collection management. From 2003 on, he was the associate dean for collection management at Texas A&M. His first book, Arms Control and Disarmament, Defense and Military, International Security, and Peace: An Annotated Guide to Sources, 1980-1987, a bibliography, was published in 1989 by ABC-CLIO. His next book, The Academic Library in the American University, focuses on academic libraries. which received the 2000 Booklist Editor's Choice Award.

He authored several reference books on political extremism and terrorism. Others works he wrote on the same topic include Encyclopedia of Modern American Extremists and Extremist Groups in 2002 and, in 2004, Encyclopedia of Modern Worldwide Extremists and Extremist Groups. It received two updated editions posthumously: a second edition in 2011 revised with new entries by Spencer C. Tucker, and a third edition containing further updates in 2021, with the third edition instead titled 9/11: The Essential Reference Guide. In 2009, his book on Holocaust denial, Holocaust Denial as an International Movement, was published by Praeger.

His memoir on his Vietnam experiences, Writing the War, was his last book published in his lifetime, a few weeks before his death.

Personal life and death

He married Susan Starr Jordan in 1966. They had two children. Atkins died on 26 March 2010 in College Station, Texas, of colon cancer. Posthumously, he was the recipient of the annual 2011 Marta Lange/CQ Press Award by the American Library Association. The award was presented to his widow.