Kenneth T. Jackson, one of the most prominent U.S. urban historians, has strongly influenced the agenda of the field and also made active collaborative and institutional contributions. His work covers the broad sweep of U.S. urban history and more specific topics, especially New York City, where he is Jacques Barzun Professor of History and the Social Sciences at Columbia University. Throughout his career, Jackson has shown an ongoing concern with linking the processes of urban organization and form with larger historical questions.

Born in 1939, Jackson earned his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1966 and a year later established his interest in the conflicts between social ideologies and urban life in his first book, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930 (1967). His ...