Jonathan Sperber

Jonathan Sperber
Born	(1952-12-26)26 December 1952 New York City,NY
Occupations	Professor Historian
Spouse	Nancy Lynn Katzman
Children	Adam Philip
Academic background
Education	Abraham Lincoln High School
Alma mater	Cornell University(AB) University of Chicago(PhD)
Doctoral advisor	Leonard Krieger
Academic work
Discipline	History
Institutions	University of Missouri
Main interests	Modern Germany

Jonathan Sperber(born 26 December 1952) is an American academic and historian who is a professor emeritus at theUniversity of Missouriand author of modern European History.

Early life and academic career

Jonathan Sperber was born on 26 December 1952 in New York City, to Louis and Ruth Sperber. He attended theAbraham Lincoln High SchoolinBrooklyn.Sperber was an undergraduate atCornell Universityfrom 1969 to 1973 and went to graduate school at theUniversity of Chicago.While there, he studied with historianLeonard Krieger.He received his Ph.D. from Chicago in 1980. He was an archivist at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York from 1979 to 1982, and, after a brief visiting professorship atNorthwestern Universityfrom 1982 to1984, went to work at theUniversity of Missouriin 1984, where he still resides. At Missouri, he was assistant professor (1984–87), associate professor (1987–92) and professor of history (1992–2003). He was appointed Curators’ Professor of History in 2003, and served as chair of the history department between 2005–2010.He is a member of theGerman Studies Associationand theAmerican Historical Association.

Author

Sperber has written a number of books on the political, social and religious history of nineteenth-century Europe. His 2013 bookKarl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Lifewas critically well-reviewed, which theNew York Timesdescribed as an "absorbing, meticulously researched biography" in its Editors Choice Book Review.The book was a 2014 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Biography.The book was also named one of the Best Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly and Book Riot.

Personal life

Sperber is married to Nancy Lynn Katzman with one son, Adam Philip.

Awards and Fellowships

• German Academic Exchange Service Fellowship, 1976-78, 1986, 1999
• Herbert Baxter Adams Prize, American Historical Association for the best first book in European history by an American author forPopular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany,1985
• Visiting Research Fellow, Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung at the University of Cologne, 1987-88
• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 1988-89
• German Studies Association Prize for the best book on German history or politics, forRhineland Radicals,1993
• American Philosophical Society Fellow, 1994
• Alan Sharlin Memorial Prize of the Social Science History Association awarded for the best book in social science history forThe Kaiser's Voters,1998
• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow for college and university teachers, 2001-02

Bibliography

• Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany(Princeton University Press, 1984,ISBN9780691054322)
• Rhineland Radicals: The Democratic Movement and the Revolution of 1848-1849(Princeton University Press, 1992,ISBN9780691008660)
• The Kaiser's Voters: Electors and Elections in Imperial Germany(Cambridge University Press, 1997,ISBN9780521591386)
• Revolutionary Europe, 1780-1850(Routledge, 2000,ISBN9780582294462)
• Europe in 1848: Revolution and Reform(Berghahn Books, 2001,ISBN9781800733602,1800733607)
• Germany, 1800-1870(Oxford University Press, 2004,ISBN0199258384,9780199258383)
• Property and Civil Society in South-Western Germany 1820-1914(Oxford University Press, 2005,ISBN9780199284757)
• The European Revolutions, 1848-1851 (New Approaches to European History)(Cambridge University Press, 2005,ISBN9780521547796)
• Europe 1850-1914: Progress, Participation and Apprehension(Routledge, 2008,ISBN9781405801348)
• Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life(Liveright, 2013,ISBN9780871404671)
• Bourgeois Europe, 1850-19142nd Ed. (Routledge, 2022,ISBN9780815364795)
• The Age of Interconnection: A Global History of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century(Oxford University Press, 2023,ISBN9780190918958)