Henry Adams: The Middle Years (1958), the second volume of Ernest Samuels's trilogy, received the Parkman Award and the Bancroft Award; Henry Adams: The Major Phase (1964), the completion of his Adams biography, earned him the Pulitzer Prize and the Friends of Literature Award in 1965. Nominated by Henry Steele Commager and John Barkham for the Pulitzer, Samuels's biography received the unanimous votes of both the biography jury and the Advisory Board. Although he has a literary, not a historical or political background, Samuels gained wide respect for the probing intelligence evident in his work on Adams. Samuels's second full biography is also the result of prodigious research in areas often outside his own training. Comprising two volumes on the art historian and philosopher Bernard Berenson, it was widely praised and received the Carl Sandburg Award in 1981 for the first volume.

Ernest Samuels was born in Chicago on 19 May 1903 to Albert...