Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer was among the many students who passed through John Bach McMaster's classes at the University of Pennsylvania during the late 1880s. Under his mentor's influence, he turned in time--as editor, biographer, and historian--to historical writing. He edited the American Crisis Biographies series, wrote a volume on the literary history of Philadelphia, and completed biographies of Robert Morris and Jay Cooke. Oberholtzer had already brought out the early volumes of A History of the United States Since the Civil War when McMaster published the final volume of his own History of the People of the United States in 1927. Giving a copy of the book to Oberholtzer, McMaster said: "There, I have come up to you. It is for you to go on." Oberholtzer did go on, bringing his narrative history to the assassination of William McKinley.

Born at Cambria Station, Chester County, Pennsylvania, on 5 October 1868, Ellis...