David S. Reynolds

David S. Reynolds (born 1948) is an American literary critic, biographer, and historian noted for his writings on American literature and culture. He is the author or editor of fifteen books, and an expert on the Civil War era—including figures such as Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Lippard, and John Brown—Reynolds is also a regular commentator on the current political and cultural scene. His articles and op eds have appeared in The New York Times, The Daily News (New York), the Hartford Courant, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, and Salon. Reynolds has lectured widely and has been interviewed on radio or TV more than eighty times. He is the only author known to have won both the Bancroft Prize, in American history, and the Christian Gauss Award, in literary criticism. His other honors include the Ambassador Book Award, the Gustavus Myers Book Award, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is a regular reviewer for the New York Times Book Review.