James Truslow Adams

James Truslow Adams (October 18, 1878 – May 18, 1949) was an American writer and historian. He was a freelance author who helped to popularize the latest scholarship about American history and his three-volume history of New England is well regarded by scholars. He popularized the phrase "American Dream" in his 1931 book The Epic of America.

Early life

Adams was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a wealthy family, the son of Elizabeth Harper (née Truslow) and stockbroker William Newton Adams Jr. His father served two terms as mayor of Summit, New Jersey.

His father had been born in Caracas, Venezuela. His paternal grandfather, William Newton Adams Sr., was American of English descent with roots in Virginia and his paternal grandmother, Carmen Michelena de Salias, a Venezuelan of Spanish descent with roots in eighteenth-century Gipuzkoa and Seville. The earliest paternal ancestor was Francis Adams from England, an indentured servant who settled the Province of Maryland in 1638.

Adams took his bachelor's degree from the New York University Tandon School of Engineering (then Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn) in 1898, and a MA degree from Yale University in 1900. He entered investment banking, rising to partner in a New York Stock Exchange member firm. In 1912, he considered his savings ample enough to switch to a career as a writer.

In 1917, he served with Colonel House on President Woodrow Wilson's commission, "The Inquiry", to prepare data for the Paris Peace Conference. By 1918, he was a captain in the Military Intelligence Division of the General Staff of the U.S. Army. By late 1918, he was selected for the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. His main task consisted in the provision of maps and the selection of plans and atlases that should be acquired by the War College, the American Geographical Society, and the Library of Congress.