Remembering Daniel Walker Howe and His Study of Early America

Daniel Walker Howe was a historian who studied America in the early 1800s. He died on December 25, 2025, at age 88. He taught at Yale, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Oxford.

His best known book is What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. It won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2008. The book looks at big changes like new roads, railways, and the telegraph, and at social movements for slavery and women's rights. He was a professor emeritus at UCLA. He was born in Ogden, Utah, and grew up in Denver. Students remembered him as a lively teacher who liked to sing early American songs.