Bruce Catton

Photos from University of Wyoming, American Heritage Center, Bruce Catton Papers. Text from New York Times obituary, August 29, 1978

Catton was a reporter with the Cleveland News, the Boston American and later with the Cleveland Plain-Dealer and a correspondent with the Newspaper Enterprise Association in Washington before he took several government posts. Among them was director of information for the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1945-46, and special assistant to the Secretary of Commerce in 1948. 

Catton won the Pulitzer Prize for historical writing and the National Book Award in 1954. Among his works on the Civil War was Two Roads to Sumter, co-authored in 1968 with his only son, William Bruce Catton. He received the Presidential Freedom Medal in 1955 and then-New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller named him chairman of the state Civil War Commission in 1960. 

Among Catton's other books were The War Lords of Washington, published in 1949; Mr. Lincoln's Army, 1951; Glory Road, 1952; [A Stillness a Appomattox, 1953 won the Pulitzer Prize] U.S. Grant and the American Military Tradition, 1954; Banners at Shenandoah, 1955; This Hallowed Ground, 1956; The Coming Fury, 1961; Terrible Swift Sword, 1962; Gettysburg: The Final Fury, and Michigan: A Bicentennial History, 1976. 

Catton was editor of American Heritage Magazine from 1954 through 1959. He was named senior editor of the magazine in 1959 and held that position until his death.