Walter A. McDougall

Walter A. McDougall is Professor of History and the Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania. A graduate of Amherst College and a Vietnam veteran, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1974.

McDougall is the author of many books, most recently Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History, 1585-1828 (2004). His other recent books include Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter With the World Since 1776 (1997) and Let the Sea Make a Noise: A History of the North Pacific from Magellan to MacArthur (1993).

In 1986, Professor McDougall won the Pulitzer Prize for The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age.

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Walter

McDougall

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Shooting The Moon, Winter 2010 | Vol. 59, No. 4

Practical rather than idealistic reasons pushed President Kennedy to challenge America to land a man on the moon within the decade

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