Dr. Alan Taylor is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He taught previously at the University of California, Davis and Boston University. Dr. Taylor graduated from Colby College, in Waterville, Maine, in 1977, and earned his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1986.

Dr. Taylor is best known for his contributions to microhis- tory, exemplified in his Wil- liam Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (1996). Using court records, land records, letters and dia- ries, he reconstructed the background of founder Wil- liam Cooper from Burlington, New Jersey, and the economic, political and social history re- lated to the land speculation, founding and settlement of Cooperstown, New York after the American Revolution- ary War.

Dr. Taylor is among a generation of historians committed to the revival of narrative history, rejecting the method- driven, quantitative work of the previous generation of "new social historians" and the theory-laden work of more recent "new cultural historians."

Dr. Taylor's The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (2006) explored the history of the borders between Canada and the United States in the aftermath of the American Revo- lution, as well as Iroquois attempts to keep control of some lands. His book The Civil War of 1812: American Cit- izens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (2010) also addressed this borderland area and strategies pur- sued by various groups. The War of 1812 has also been characterized as a continuation of the Revolutionary War, one of what Kevin Phillips described as Cousins' Wars (1999) in his book by the same title.