Eric Foner is an American historian. On the faculty of the Department of History at Columbia University since 1982, he writes extensively on political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African American biography, Reconstruction, and historiography. Foner is the leading contemporary historian of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period, having written Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, winner of many prizes for history writing, and more than ten other books on the topic. His free online courses on "The Civil War and Reconstruction," published in 2014, are available from Columbia University on ColumbiaX at: https://www.edx.org/course/columbiax/columbiax-hist1-1x-civil-war-2241. In 2011, Foner's The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery won the Pulitzer Prize, Lincoln Prize, and the Bancroft Prize. Foner also won the Bancroft in 1989 for his book Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution. In 2000, he was elected president of the American Historical Association. 

February 7th, 1943 in New York City (Age 81)