Robert Richardson is a distinguished historian and the author of several biographies of great American philosophers, including William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism (2006), Emerson: The Mind on Fire (1995), winner of the Frederic G. Melcher Book Award, and Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind (1986). Richardson is the recipient of the Francis Parkman Prize and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, among many other honors. He has taught at Harvard University, University of Colorado and Wesleyan University.