Full Name
Allen Guelzo
Organizational Affiliation
University of Florida
Speaker Bio
Dr. Allen C. Guelzo is a New York Times® best-seller author, American historian, and commentator on public issues. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, National Affairs, First Things, U.S. News & World Report, The Weekly Standard, Washington Monthly, National Review, The American Scholar, the Daily Beast, and the Claremont Review of Books, and has been featured on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday” and “On Point,” The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (2008), Meet the Press: Press Pass with David Gregory, Morning Edition with Steve Inskeep (2024), The Civil War: The Untold Story (Great Divide Pictures, 2014), Race to the White House: Lincoln vs. Douglas (CNN, 2016), Legends and Lies: The Civil War (Fox, 2018), Reconstruction (PBS, 2019), Grant (The History Channel, 2020), Abraham Lincoln (The History Channel, 2022), and Brian Lamb’s “Booknotes.” In 2010, he was nominated for a Grammy Award along with David Straithern and Richard Dreyfuss for their production of the entirety of The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (BBC Audio).
He is Professor of Humanities in the Hamilton School of Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. He holds an MA and PhD in history from the University of Pennsylvania. he has been a member of the faculty at Eastern University (1991-2004), Gettysburg College (2004-19), and Princeton University (2019-2025)
Among his many award-winning publications, he is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Wm. Eerdmans, 1999), which won both the Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize in 2000; Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (Simon & Schuster, 2004) which also won the Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize, for 2005; Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America (Simon & Schuster, 2008), on the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858; a volume of essays, Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas (Southern Illinois University Press, 2009) which won a Certificate of Merit from the Illinois State Historical Association in 2010; and Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction (in the Oxford University Press ‘Very Short Introductions’ series). In 2012, he published Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction with Oxford University Press, and in 2013 Alfred Knopf published his book on the battle of Gettysburg (for the 150th anniversary of the battle), Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, which spent eight weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Gettysburg: The Last Invasion won the Lincoln Prize for 2014, the inaugural Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History, the Fletcher Pratt Award of the New York City Round Table, and the Richard Harwell Award of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table. His most recent publications are Redeeming the Great Emancipator (Harvard University Press, 2016) which originated as the 2012 Nathan Huggins Lectures at Harvard University, Reconstruction: A Concise History (Oxford University Press, 2018), and Robert E. Lee: A Life (2021), which was named one of the Wall Street Journal’s ‘Top Ten’ books of 2021. His most recent publications include Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy and the American Experiment (Knopf) which won the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize for 2024, and Voices from Gettysburg: Letters, Papers and Memoirs from the Civil War’s Greatest Battle (Kensington/Penguin Random House). Together with James Hankins he is the author of a two-volume Western civilization survey, The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition (2025).
He is one of Power Line’s 100 “Top Professors” in America. In 2009, he delivered the Commonwealth Fund Lecture at University College, London, on “Lincoln, Cobden and Bright: The Braid of Liberalism in the 19th-Century’s Transatlantic World.” He has been awarded the Lincoln Medal of the Union League Club of New York City, the Lincoln Award of the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia, and the Lincoln Award of the Union League of Philadelphia, in addition to the James Q. Wilson Award for Distinguished Scholarship on the Nature of a Free Society and the Lincoln Forum’s Richard N. Current Award.
He lives in Gainesville, Florida, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Debra. His website is www.allenguelzo.com. They have three children - Jerusha Mast, Alexandra Fanucci, and Maj. Jonathan Guelzo (USA) – and eight grandchildren.
He is Professor of Humanities in the Hamilton School of Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. He holds an MA and PhD in history from the University of Pennsylvania. he has been a member of the faculty at Eastern University (1991-2004), Gettysburg College (2004-19), and Princeton University (2019-2025)
Among his many award-winning publications, he is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Wm. Eerdmans, 1999), which won both the Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize in 2000; Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (Simon & Schuster, 2004) which also won the Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize, for 2005; Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America (Simon & Schuster, 2008), on the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858; a volume of essays, Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas (Southern Illinois University Press, 2009) which won a Certificate of Merit from the Illinois State Historical Association in 2010; and Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction (in the Oxford University Press ‘Very Short Introductions’ series). In 2012, he published Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction with Oxford University Press, and in 2013 Alfred Knopf published his book on the battle of Gettysburg (for the 150th anniversary of the battle), Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, which spent eight weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Gettysburg: The Last Invasion won the Lincoln Prize for 2014, the inaugural Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History, the Fletcher Pratt Award of the New York City Round Table, and the Richard Harwell Award of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table. His most recent publications are Redeeming the Great Emancipator (Harvard University Press, 2016) which originated as the 2012 Nathan Huggins Lectures at Harvard University, Reconstruction: A Concise History (Oxford University Press, 2018), and Robert E. Lee: A Life (2021), which was named one of the Wall Street Journal’s ‘Top Ten’ books of 2021. His most recent publications include Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy and the American Experiment (Knopf) which won the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize for 2024, and Voices from Gettysburg: Letters, Papers and Memoirs from the Civil War’s Greatest Battle (Kensington/Penguin Random House). Together with James Hankins he is the author of a two-volume Western civilization survey, The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition (2025).
He is one of Power Line’s 100 “Top Professors” in America. In 2009, he delivered the Commonwealth Fund Lecture at University College, London, on “Lincoln, Cobden and Bright: The Braid of Liberalism in the 19th-Century’s Transatlantic World.” He has been awarded the Lincoln Medal of the Union League Club of New York City, the Lincoln Award of the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia, and the Lincoln Award of the Union League of Philadelphia, in addition to the James Q. Wilson Award for Distinguished Scholarship on the Nature of a Free Society and the Lincoln Forum’s Richard N. Current Award.
He lives in Gainesville, Florida, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Debra. His website is www.allenguelzo.com. They have three children - Jerusha Mast, Alexandra Fanucci, and Maj. Jonathan Guelzo (USA) – and eight grandchildren.
Speaking At
