Momentous Events in Small Places

Edward L. Ayers received his PhD from Yale University and is Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and President Emeritus at the University of Richmond. A specialist on the history of the South, his books include Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment In the Nineteenth-Century American South and The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction. The latter won the Frank L. and Harriet C. Owsley Award from the Southern Historical Association and the James Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and for a National Book Award.

Professor Ayers has won several teaching awards including the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award. In 1995, he was John Adams Professor of American Studies at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, under the auspices of the Fulbright Commission. He is director of “The Valley of the Shadow", a project linking digital technology with Civil War history.