Joseph J. Ellis is the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College. He has written several books including The New England Mind in Transition (1973); with Robert Moore, School for Soldiers: West Point and the Profession of Arms (1974); After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture (1981); and Passsionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams (1994). In 1997, Ellis's American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson won the National Book Award for nonfiction.