JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS — Pulitzer Prize in History 1922
As a Captain on the US Army's General Staff at the Paris Peace Conference in Versailles, Polytechnic University alumnus James Truslow Adams (1878-1949) witnessed history firsthand. Three years later, he won the 1922 Pulitzer Prize in history for his seminal work, "The Founding of New England," which showed economics playing a greater role in the New World's development than religious persecution. Such was Adam's character, a prodigious writer, author and editor of over thirty volumes articulating the American psyche. With one eye toward history and one toward the future, he once again crystallized the nation's consciousness in 1931, at the height of the Depression, by coining the expression, "the American Dream....It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."