William Leuchtenberg William Leuchtenburg, scholar of the presidency and history professor emeritus at UNC-Chapel Hill, is the nation’s leading authority on Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The author of more than a dozen books on 20th century American history, Leuchtenburg is best known for The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–1932 and the prize-winning Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940. His recent works include American Places and The White House Looks South. He has been the recipient of Guggenheim, Mellon, and Woodrow Wilson Center fellowships. He is a past president of the Organization of American Historians and the Society of American Historians. After undergraduate studies at Cornell University and completion of a Ph.D. at Columbia University, Leuchtenburg taught briefly at Smith College, New York University, and Harvard University, and for 30 years in Columbia’s history department. Like his friend, John Hope Franklin, he was lured to North Carolina by the National Humanities Center. He served for ten years as a Kenan professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and retired in1992. In his presidential address to the American Historical Association in 1991, Leuchtenburg assessed the relationship of the historian to the public realm and recounted his own lifelong involvement outside academics—from marching in Selma alongside Martin Luther King Jr. to election night commentary on network television to testimony before Congressional committees. He repudiated those who wish to politicize the profession: “Those who insist that history is worthwhile only when it offers solutions to current problems reveal a hostility to the very nature of the historical enterprise.”