Milton Meltzer (May 8, 1915 – September 19, 2009) was an American historian and author best known for his nonfiction books on Jewish, African-American, and American history. Since the 1950s, he was a prolific author of history books in the children's literature and young adult literature genres, having written nearly 100 books. Meltzer was an advocate for human rights, as well as an adjunct professor for the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He won the biennial Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for his career contribution to American children's literature in 2001. Meltzer died of esophageal cancer in 2009.

Personal life

Meltzer was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, to Benjamin and Mary Meltzer, semi-literate immigrants from Austria-Hungary. One of three sons, Meltzer was the only child to graduate from high school, furthering his education at Columbia University from 1932 to 1936; he had to drop out of college before graduating to support his family after his father died of cancer. Meltzer was a staunch advocate for human rights, and much of his work he claimed was his way of speaking out against injustices and dictatorships. After serving during the war, Meltzer became a writer for the CBS radio broadcasting network and then took an executive position with the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.

Meltzer most recently lived in New York City where he died at the age of 94 from esophageal cancer. Many of his personal writings, manuscripts, and papers, including letters, are now housed in the University of Oregon Special Collections, and are available to the public.

Writing and awards

Meltzer's books often chronicled struggles for freedom, such as the American Revolution, the antislavery movement of the nineteenth-century United States, and the movement against antisemitism.

He wrote several biographies, including ones of Langston Hughes and Thomas Jefferson. Though most of his books are nonfiction he wrote two historical fiction novels, The Underground Man and Tough Times. Meltzer co-authored with Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes the book A Pictorial History of the Negro in America, which was published in 1956. He also collaborated with Hughes on Black Magic: A Pictorial History of the African-American in the Performing Arts, though Hughes passed shortly after the book went to the press. In 1981 he was an American Book Award finalist for All Times, All Peoples: A World History of Slavery. Meltzer's Never to Forget: The Jews of the Holocaust was the 1976 recipient of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award in the non-fiction category and winner of the National Jewish Book Award. He won the Boston Globe-Horn Award in 1983 for Jewish Americans: A History in Their own Words, 1650-1950.<!-- library records via Ext links WorldCat, GND -->

Other achievements and works

Meltzer was an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 1977 to 1980, and a guest lecturer at universities in the United States and England. Additionally he presented at professional gatherings and did seminars for other professionals. He did work on various documentary films such as History of the American Negro and Five.

  • The Jewish Americans: A History in Their Own Words (1982)
  • The Hispanic Americans (1982)
  • The Truth about the Ku Klux Klan (1982)
  • The Terrorists (1983)
  • A Book About Names: in which Custom, Tradition, Law, Myth, History, Folklore, Foolery, Legend, Fashion, Nonsense, Symbol, Taboo help explain how we got our names and what they mean (1984)
  • The Black Americans: A History in Their Own Words, 1619–1983 (Crowell, 1984)
  • Ain't Gonna Study War No More: A Story of America's Peace Seekers (1985)
  • Betty Friedan: A Voice for Women's Rights (1985)
  • Poverty in America (1986)
  • George Washington and the Birth of Our Nation (1986)
  • Winnie Mandela: The Soul of South Africa (1986)
  • Mary McLeod Bethune: Voice of Black Hope (1987)
  • The Landscape of Memory (1987)
  • The American Revolutionaries: A History in their Own Words, 1750–1800 (1987)
  • Benjamin Franklin: The New American (1988)
  • Rescue: The Story of How Gentiles Saved Jews in the Holocaust (1988)
  • Starting From Home (1988)
  • American Politics: How it Really Works (1989)
  • Voices From the Civil War: A Documentary History of the Great American Conflict (1989)
  • The Big Book for Peace (Dutton, 1990) (Illustrated by Leonard Everett Fisher)
  • The Bill of Rights: How We Got It and What it Means (1990)
  • Columbus and the World Around Him (1990)
  • The American Promise (1990)
  • Crime in America (1990)
  • Thomas Jefferson: The Revolutionary Aristocrat (1991)
  • The Amazing Potato: A Story in Which the Incas, Conquistadors, Marie Antoinette, Thomas Jefferson, Wars, Famines, Immigrants, and French Fries all Play a Part (1992)
  • Voices from the Civil War (1992)
  • Politics of Plagiarism (1992)
  • The American Revolutionaries (1993)
  • Lincoln, in his own words, by Stephen Alcorn and Milton Meltzer (1993)
  • Andrew Jackson: And His America (1993)
  • Gold: The True Story of Why People Search for it, Mine it, Trade it, Steal it, Mint it, Hoard it, Shape it, Wear it, Fight and Kill for it (1993)
  • Theodore Roosevelt and His America (1994)
  • Cheap Raw Material (1994)
  • Who Cares: Millions Do, A Book About Altruism (1994)
  • Hold your Horses: A Feedbag full of Fact and Fable (1995)
  • Tomas Paine: Voice of Revolution (1996)
  • Weapons & Warfare: From the Stone Age to the Space Age (1996)
  • A History of Jewish Life from Eastern Europe to America (1996)
  • The Many Lives of Andrew Carnegie (1997)
  • Ten Queens: A Portrait of Women of Power (1998)
  • Food (1998)
  • Witches and Witch-Hunts: A History of Persecution (1999)
  • Driven from the Land (1999)
  • Carl Sandburg: A Biography (1999)
  • They Came in Chains: the Story of the Slave Ships (2000)
  • Piracy & Plunder: A Murderous Business (2001)
  • Captain James Cook: Three Times Around the World (Great Explorations) (2001)
  • Robert E. Peary: To the Top of the World (2001)
  • Ferdinand Magellan (2001)
  • Bound for America (2001)
  • The Trail of Tears: The Story of the Cherokee Removal (Great Journeys) (2001)
  • Case Closed (2001)
  • Great Explorations (2001)
  • Ten Kings: and the Worlds they Ruled (2002)
  • Walt Whitman: A Biography (2002)
  • There Comes a Time: The Struggle for Civil Rights (2001)
  • Day the Sky Fell (2002)
  • Hour of Freedom, by Milton Meltzer and Marc Nadel (2003)
  • The Cotton Gin (Great Inventions) (2003)
  • The Printing Press (2003)
  • Edgar Allan Poe: A Biography (2003)
  • Francisco Pizarro: The Conquest of Peru (Great Explorations) 2004)
  • Hear That Whistle Blow!: How the Railroad Changed the World (2004)
  • Emily Dickinson (2004)
  • Henry David Thoreau: A Biography (2006)
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography (2006)
  • Herman Melville: A Biography (2006)
  • Albert Einstein: A Biography (2007)
  • Willa Cather (2007)
  • Up Close: John Steinbeck (2008)
  • Lincoln, in his own words, by Stephen Alcorn and Milton Meltzer (2008)
  • John Steinbeck: a twentieth-century life (2008)

Fiction

  • The Underground Man (1972)
  • Tough Times (2007)

Notes

References

  • Guide to the Milton Meltzer Papers 1955–1973, Special Collections, University of Oregon — with biographical notes
  • "'It Was a Wildly Exciting Time': Milton Meltzer Remembers the New Deal's Federal Theatre Project" at History Matters
  • — audiobook including the Wilder speech by Meltzer
  • Milton Meltzer at The Worcester Writers Project
  • Milton Meltzer at Bookrags

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