THOMAS KESSNER is a graduate of Brooklyn College (1963) and earned his doctorate at Coumbia University in 1975 with distinction. He is currently Professor and Deputy Executive Officer of the Ph.D. Program in History at the CUNY Graduate Center. Professor Kessner has published several books, including The Golden Door (1977), a study of immigrant life and economic mobility in New York City and Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York (1989). He is currently completing a volume on the making of New York's capital class, 1870-1900, tentatively titled The Metropolis of Capital, to be published by Simon and Schuster in 2001. His work has garnered awards and fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, The National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Professor Kessner has served as a consultant to the New York City Board of Education, the Ellis Island Museum, the New York Historical Society, the Museum of the City of New York and many other scholarly and professional institutions. He was also an Associate Editor for the Encyclopedia of New York City. He has led directed more than half a dozen NEH Summer Seminars for College and High School Teachers

Publications

Completing a book for the Oxford University Press, Pivotal Moments in American History Series about the Lindbergh flight and its impact.