Joseph Ellis (born 1943) is an American historian and professor emeritus at Mount Holyoke College. After receiving degrees from the College of William and Mary and Yale University, Ellis served as captain in the army. Ellis joined the faculty at Mount Holyoke in 1972 and has also taught at West Point, the Honors College at the University of Massachusetts, and Williams College.
Ellis is the author of nine books dealing primarily with what he terms the ‘revolutionary generation’ of major American political figures in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. He received the National Book Award in 1997 for his biography of Thomas Jefferson, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson....
