Harold Holzer - Life and Career

Life and Career

In his work as a historian, Holzer has authored, co-authored, and edited 46 books, and contributed more than 500 articles to magazines and journals, plus chapters and forewords for 54 additional books. He is a frequent guest on television (C-Span, A&E, The History Channel, and PBS including on "Bill Moyers Journal" and bicentennial-year documentaries on a variety of networks). He also lectures, and has curated six museum exhibitions, including three shows of Lincoln art at the former Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He served as chief historian for the exhibition "Lincoln and New York" at the New-York Historical Society, October 2009-March 2010 and co-organized "The First Step to Freedom," a multi-city, sesquicentennial exhibition of Lincoln's original Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which debuted at The Schomburg Library in Harlem on September 22, 2012. He has performed, throughout the nation, stage programs entitled "Lincoln Seen and Heard," "The Lincoln Family Album," "Lincoln in American Memory," and "Grant Seen and Heard"—combining period pictures with authentic words—with such actors as Sam Waterston, Liam Neeson, Richard Dreyfuss, Stephen Lang, Holly Hunter, and Dianne Wiest. The programs have been staged at such venues as: the White House, the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, The William J. Clinton Presidential Library, Lincoln Center in New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the Lincoln Association of Los Angeles, The Lincoln Forum at Gettysburg, Ford's Theatre, site of the Lincoln assassination, and The U.S. Capitol.

Before joining the Metropolitan Museum in 1992, Holzer was special counselor to the New York State economic development director in the administration of Governor Mario M. Cuomo (with whom he co-edited the 1990 book, "Lincoln on Democracy," which has now been translated into four languages). Before that, he was director of communications at WNET/Channel 13, the flagship PBS station in New York, and in the 1970s, served as a political press secretary—first to Rep. Bella S. Abzug (D-NY) in Congress and in her campaigns for the U. S. Senate and Mayor of New York; and in the 1977 general election mayoral campaign of Mr. Cuomo. Holzer started his career as a reporter, later editor, for the onetime news weekly the "Manhattan Tribune."

In 2008, Holzer received the National Humanities Medal from President Bush and the National Endowment for the Humanities and The Lincoln Medal of Honor from the Lincoln Society of Springfield, Illinois. He also won a second-place 2005 Lincoln Prize (for "Lincoln at Cooper Union"). For his book "Lincoln President-Elect," Holzer received awards from The Lincoln Group of New York, The Civil War Round Table of New York, and The Illinois State Historical Society. His young readers' book, "Father Abraham: Lincoln and His Sons," won the first James Robertson Jr. Award for Civil War Children's Literature from The Civil War Round Table of New York. He has also won lifetime achievement awards from The Civil War Round Tables of New York and Chicago, and Lincoln groups in Washington and New York. He won the DAR History Award Medal in 2012.