About

Michael D. Hattem is one of the nation’s “leading scholars of the Revolution” and the foremost expert on how it has been remembered. He received his PhD in History at Yale University and has taught at The New School and Knox College. He is the author of The Memory of ’76: The Revolution in American History (Yale University Press, 2024), which was a finalist for the 2025 George Washington Prize, and Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution (Yale University Press, 2020). His most recent book, The Declaration of Independence: A Concise History, will be published by Oxford University Press in November 2026.

Hattem is a sought-after speaker whose talks have attracted audiences across the country. His work has been featured or mentioned in The New York Times, TIME magazine, The Smithsonian Magazine, the Washington Post, as well as many other mainstream media publications and outlets. He has also served as a historical consultant and contributor for a number of museums, projects, and institutions, curated historical exhibitions, appeared in television documentaries, and authenticated and written catalogue essays for some of the most notable auctions of Revolution-era historical documents in the last two decades.