About the Presenter
James E. Lewis Jr. is a Professor of History at Kalamazoo College, where he has been teaching for more than twenty years. He received his Ph.D. in 1994 from the University of Virginia. In addition to a number of essays in collected works, he is the author of four books: The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood (UNC, 1998); John Quincy Adams: Policymaker for the Union (SR Books, 2001); The Louisiana Purchase (Thomas Jefferson Foundation, 2003); and The Burr Conspiracy (Princeton, 2017). The Burr Conspiracy was long-listed or a finalist for a number of prestigious awards, including the George Washington Prize (2018). His current project concerns the troubled history of the American prime meridian between the 1780s and the 1880s.