David Hackett Fischer program transcript.pdf

"David Hackett Fischer: Washington's Crossing"

Author and 2015 recipient of the Pritzker Literature Award David Hackett Fischer discusses his Pulitzer-Prize winning book at the 2017 ON WAR Military History Symposium.

Six months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution was all but lost. A powerful British force had routed the Americans at New York, occupied three colonies, and advanced within sight of Philadelphia. Yet, as David Hackett Fischer recounts in this riveting history, George Washington—and many other Americans—refused to let the Revolution die. While British and German forces remained rigid and hierarchical, Americans evolved an open and flexible system that was fundamental to their success. The startling success of Washington and his compatriots not only saved the faltering American Revolution but helped to give it new meaning.

DAVID HACKETT FISCHER was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, where his father was superintendent of schools. A graduate of Princeton University (A.B., 1958) and the Johns Hopkins University (Ph.D., 1962), Fischer is University Professor and Earl Warren Professor of History at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where he has served on the faculty for more than 50 years. A recipient of numerous teaching awards over his long and distinguished career—including the 1990 Carnegie Prize as Massachusetts Professor of the Year and the Louis Dembitz Brandeis Prize for Excellence in Teaching—Fischer has held visiting professorships at Harvard University, The University of Oxford, the University of Washington, and several institutions in New Zealand. He and his wife, Judith Hummel Fischer, have two children and two grandchildren.