Jim Cullen is chair of the History Department of the Fieldston School in New York. He is the author of numerous books, among them The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation (2003) and Essaying the Past: How to Read, Write and Think about History, Third Edition (Wiley Blackwell, 2016). He lives in Hastings on Hudson, New York, with his wife and four children.