Robert H. Ferrell

Robert H. Ferrell

Robert H. Ferrell was born on May 8th, 1921. Robert passed away August 8th, 2018 at 97 years old. Robert H. Ferrell was born in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Ferrell attended Bowling Green State University where he received a BS and Yale University where he received a master's degree and a PhD.

Robert H. Ferrell was an American historian known for writing and editing over 60 works on themes including American diplomacy, the presidency, World War I, and American foreign policy. He is particularly known as the expert on Harry S. Truman.

He was the son of bank manager Ernest Hugh Ferrell Sr. and schoolteacher Edna Rentsch. During his childhood, the family lived in Cleveland before the Wall Street Crash forced them to move to Waterville, Ohio.

During his childhood, he enjoyed playing the piano and listening to classical music. As a student, he was the full-time church organist.

During the Korean War, he worked in Washington, D.C as an intelligence analyst for the US Air Force. After leaving the Air Force following the end of the war, he entered academia, and between 1952 and 1953, he served as a professor at Michigan State.

In academia, he would establish a reputation for himself with his work, which typically drew on diplomatic papers, diaries, private letters, and other lesser-known sources. In his research, he not only studied what the leaders said but also what they did when the public was not watching.

For much of his career in academia, Robert Hugh Ferrell was an Indiana University professor of History. Upon retiring from his professorial post, he continued to research and write until his death in 2018.

In his most popular work, Peace in Their Time, Robert H. Ferrell tells of the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1928, which criticized war as a national policy tool.

Initially proposed by Aristide Briand, the French foreign minister, it would become a global treaty that had the ideals of advocates of collective security, politicians, and pacifists. Although most people hoped it would end the war, experts and diplomats recognized its limitations.

The work examines the interplay of public enthusiasm, political maneuvering, and idealism, offering insights into the complexities of international power in juxtaposition with human hope.

In the 1994 work Choosing Truman, Robert H. Ferrell tells the story of the 1944 Democratic convention.

With the president's health in decline, party leaders recognized the importance of finding a successor as soon as possible. They crossed the likes of William Douglas and Henry Wallace for being too liberal and Alben Barkley for being too obscure and old.

Ferrell reconstructs that moment when the most powerful people in the Democratic Party came together to choose Harry Truman as the vice president, which opened the way for his presidency.

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Robert H. Ferrell: F.A.Q