Alexander Keyssar is Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. An historian by training, he has specialized in the explanation of issues that have contemporary policy implications. His current research interests include election reform, the history of democracies, and the history of poverty.
He is author of Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts (Cambridge University Press, 1986) which was awarded three scholarly prizes, and The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (Basic Books, 2000), which was named the best book in U.S. history by both the American Historical Association and the Historical Society and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. He is also co-author of The Way of the Ship: America's Maritime History Reenvisioned, 1600-2000 (Wiley, 2008), and of Inventing America: A History of the United States (W.W. Norton, 2002), a text integrating the history of technology and science into the mainstream of American history.
In addition, Keyssar is coeditor of a series on Comparative and International Working-Class History. In 2004-05, he chaired the Social Science Research Council's National Research Commission on Voting and Elections, and he writes frequently for the popular press about American politics and history.
