John Stauffer is chair of the History of American Civilization and Professor of English at Harvard University. His first book, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Harvard University Press, 2002) was co-winner of the 2002 Frederick Douglass Book Prize from the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the winner of the Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians, and the runner-up for the Lincoln Prize. He is also the co-author of Meteor of War: The John Brown Story and the editor of the Modern Library edition of Frederick Dougalss's My Bondage and my Freedom. He lives in Cambridge, MA.