Graham to discuss historian’s influence on presidents

Dr. Mark W. Graham, chair and professor of History at Grove City College, will spend President’s Day at the Gerald R. Ford Library at the University of Michigan talking about a writer whose work influenced several presidents.

Graham will be discussing his research on Charles Rollin, who wrote an extensive work entitled “Ancient History” that was very popular in America between the late 18^th and mid 19^th centuries, and the writer’s place in American history as a popularizer of universal history.

“Universal history presumed to stretch across space from the ‘dawn of time’ … Providing a historical framework and a deep reservoir of practical moral examples, this metanarrative sought to teach and illustrate universal truths about humanity,” Graham said. “Rollin was a favorite childhood reading of several U.S. Presidents, including J.Q. Adams and William Henry Harrison.”

Graham’s visit to Ann Arbor is part of the book launch of “What the President’s Read: Childhood Stories and Family Favorites,” a collection of essays that includes Graham’s “Charles Rollin and Universal History in America.” The book, edited by Elizabeth Goodenough of the University of Michigan and Marilynn Olson of Texas State University.

“Dr. Graham’s research adds an important piece to the body of scholarship on the background influences of American presidents. Grove City students are fortunate to have such an outstanding scholar teaching them in the classroom,” Dr. Paul C. Kemeny, dean of the Calderwood School of Arts and Letters, said.

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