Donald Kagan

Donald Kagan was born in 1932 in Kursenai, Lithuania, to Jewish parents, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He studied at Brooklyn College and Brown University and completed his doctoral dissertation at Ohio State University in 1958. He went on to teach at Cornell and Yale Universities. A distinguished classicist and historian, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2002. He is internationally recognized as the foremost scholar on the history of the Peloponnesian War, with his four-volume work on the subject (1987-88). He has authored many other books on ancient and modern history. He resides in Hamden, Connecticut.