Robert V. Remini

Robert Vincent Remini (July 17, 1921 – March 28, 2013) was an American historian and a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago.^[1] He wrote numerous works about President Andrew Jackson and the Jacksonian Era. For the third volume of Andrew Jackson, subtitled The Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845, he won the 1984 U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction.^[2] He wrote biographies of Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, Martin van Buren, Joseph Smith and Daniel Webster.

Life

Remini was born in 1921 in New York City. During World War II, he served in the Navy.^[3] Remini received his B.S. from Fordham University in 1943 and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University (1947 and 1951, respectively). He was professor of history emeritus and research professor of humanities emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Remini joined the UIC faculty in 1965 and was the school’s first chairman of the history department.^[4] He later founded the UIC Institute for the Humanities, which he chaired from 1981 to 1987.^[5]

On April 28, 2005, Remini was appointed the Historian of the United States House of Representatives, a post he held until 2010. Earlier, Remini had been asked by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington to write a Congressional history, The House, which was published in 2006.^[6] He retired in 2010 and was succeeded by Matthew Wasniewski.

His last work was At the Edge of the Precipice: Henry Clay and the Compromise that Saved the Union (2010). Remini married Ruth T. Kuhner in 1948 and they had three children. He died at Evanston Hospital Evanston, Illinois in 2013 after a stroke. He was 91.^[7]

Selected works

• Andrew Jackson and the Bank War (1967)
• Andrew Jackson (1969)
• The Life of Andrew Jackson (1988)
  • Vol. 1 The Course of American Empire (1767–1821) (1977)
  • Vol. 2 The Course of American Freedom (1822–1832) (1981)
  • Vol. 3 The Course of American Democracy (1833–1845) (1984)
• The Revolutionary Age of Andrew Jackson (1985)
• The Jacksonian Era (1989)
• Henry Clay: Statesman of the Union (1993)
• Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time (1997)
• The Battle of New Orleans: Andrew Jackson and America's First Military Victory (1999)
• Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars (2001)
• John Quincy Adams (2002)
• Joseph Smith (2002)
• The House: The History of the House of Representatives (2006)
• Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party
• Great Generals Series: Andrew Jackson, A Biography (2008)
• A Short History of the United States

References

External links

• Works by or about Robert V. Remini in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Booknotes interview with Remini on Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union, May 5, 1992.
• About Books C-Span Lecture by Remini on Daniel Webster: A Man and His Time, October 5, 1997.
  • In Depth interview with Remini, May 7, 2006