Cantor, Milton 1925-
CANTOR, Milton 1925-
PERSONAL:
Born June 11, 1925, in New York, NY; Education: Columbia University, Ph.D., 1954.
ADDRESSES:
Office—History Department, Herter Hall, University of Massachusetts, 161 Presidents Dr., Amherst, MA 01003-9312. E-mail—[email protected].
CAREER:
University of Massachusetts—Amherst, member of faculty of history department, beginning 1963, professor, 1973-2002, professor emeritus, 2002—. University of Kiel, Fulbright lecturer, 1960-61; University of Warwick, senior lecturer, 1981-82. Historian for National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. Labor History, managing editor, 1963.
WRITINGS:
(Editor, with Howard H. Quint and Dean Albertson) Main Problems in American History, Dorsey Press (Homewood, IL), 1964, 4th edition, 1978.
(Editor) Black Labor in America, Negro Universities Press (Westport, CT), 1969.
Max Eastman ("United States Authors" series), Twayne Publishers (New York, NY), 1970.
(Editor) Hamilton, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1971.
(Editor, with Howard H. Quint) Men, Women, and Issues in American History, Dorsey Press (Homewood, IL), 1975, revised edition, 1980.
(Editor, with Bruce Laurie) Class, Sex, and the Woman Worker, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1977.
The Divided Left: American Radicalism, 1900-1975, Hill and Wang (New York, NY), 1978.
(Editor) American Workingclass Culture: Explorations in American Labor and Social History, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1979.
(Editor, with Henry Steele Commager) Documents of American History, 10th edition, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1988.
Contributor of category essays to Words That Make America Great, compiled by Jerome Agel, Random House (New York, NY), 1997.
SIDELIGHTS:
Historian Milton Cantor has specialized in American labor and social history. For Twayne's "United States Authors" series, he wrote Max Eastman, a brief study of the radical poet and editor (1883-1969) who promoted women's suffrage and vehemently opposed U.S. intervention in World War I. Cantor also wrote The Divided Left: American Radicalism, 1900-1975. Cantor has edited or coedited several major works, including Main Problems in American History, which has gone into three subsequent editions since its initial publication in 1964.
In 1988, Cantor collaborated with editor Henry Steele Commager on the tenth edition of Commager's Documents of American History. This work, which collects important primary documents relating to the creation and development the United States, is widely regarded as one of the best reference works in its field. Cantor has also contributed essays to Jerome Agel's bookWords That Make America Great, which collects not only well-known speeches and documents, but also such unexpected pieces as comedian George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" routine. A Booklist reviewer observed that Cantor's "well-written" introductions to each section "are valuable by themselves as an overview of each topic and a survey of critical issues in American history."
A member of the department of history at University of Massachusetts—Amherst since 1963, Cantor became a full professor in 1973. Although he officially retired in 2002, he continues to teach.
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 15, 1997, review of Words That Make America Great, p. 1262.
Library Journal, April 1, 1997, Grant A. Fredericksen, review of Words That Make America Great, p. 105.*