Mike Wallace

Mike Wallace (born July 22, 1942) is an American historian. He specializes in the history of New York City, and in the history and practice of "public history". In 1998 he co-authored Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, which in 1999 won the Pulitzer Prize in History. In 2017, he published a successor volume, Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919. Wallace is a Distinguished Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (City University of New York), and at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Early life and education Wallace was born in Queens in 1942. The family moved to San Francisco in 1943 and returned to New York in 1949. He grew up in Fresh Meadows, Queens, Valley Stream, and Great Neck. Wallace went to Columbia College in 1960. On graduating in 1964 he stayed on at Columbia University for graduate studies. With historian Richard Hofstadter as his adviser, his dissertation examined the emergence of the two-party system. He worked as Hofstadter's research assistant, and in 1968 had his first article accepted by the American Historical Review. In 1968 Wallace took part in the student strike at Columbia University. In 1969 he and Hofstadter wrote a documentary history of violence in the U.S.