Pulitzer-Prize Winning Author on Campus

Professor Daniel W. Howe from UCLA and Oxford will be discussing his book What Hath God Wrought? The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 on Nov 3 in Mayers Aud.

Daniel Walker Howe is a historian of the early national period of American history and specializes in the intellectual and religious history of the United States. He is Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus at Oxford University in England and Professor of History Emeritus at UCLA. He received the Pulitzer Prize for History for What Hath God Wrought, his most famous book. He was president of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic in 2001 and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

The author says, "The invention of the electric telegraph, the first instant long-distance medium of communications, had effects comparable to the coming of the Internet in our own time. Combined with other innovations like the railroad, the steamboat, and the steam-powered press, American life was transformed in a few years from what we might call a "third-world" existence in modern industrialization. Evangelical religion played an important part in this transformation. Religion in that generation was allied with science and technology, and everybody believed in the Intelligent Design of the Universe."

"The inventor of the telegraph, Samuel F. B. Morse, was a devout Christian, and the first message he sent to demonstrate the electric telegraph was "What Hath God Wrought." I use it as the title of my book for 3 reasons: It refers to the communication revolution, to the importance of religion in American history, and in particular to the widely held belief that the United States had a Providential Mission, and the nation itself had been wrought by God."

This event is sponsored by the History & Political Science Department.