Mike Wallace (1942 – 2026)

Their Story

Mike Wallace was an American historian who specialized in the history of New York City and the history and practice of "public history." In 1998 he co-authored Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, which in 1999 won the Pulitzer Prize in History. In 2017, he published a successor volume, Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919. In 2025, he completed the trilogy with Gotham at War: A History of New York City from 1933 to 1945. In 1971, Wallace accepted a teaching position at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where he taught since 1971, focusing on New York City's history and the history of crime in the city. He founded the Gotham Center for New York City History at the CUNY Graduate School, devoted to the study and popular promotion of the history of New York City. Beyond his scholarship, Wallace was a pioneering voice in radical history, broadening American historical study to include previously marginalized voices, and in 1973 helped launch the Radical History Forum, also transforming the Radical Historians' Newsletter into the Radical History Review by 1975. In 1996, his essays about how history is presented to the public were collected in Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory.

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Wallace_(historian)