Moses Coit Tyler has been called the father of American studies for has pioneering work in the scholarly study of colonial and revolutionary literature. Considered a member of the Critical School of American history, Tyler combined an interest in literature and history in two great and enduring studies of the formative years of American literature: A History of American Literature, 1607-1765, published in 1878, and The Literary History of the American Revolution: 1763-1783, published in 1897. Praised by such scholars as Perry Miller, Howard Mumford Jones, W. E. H. Lecky, and George Otto Trevelyan, Tyler's works remain a part of the standard scholarship on the period. Like many of the great American historians of the late nineteenth century, Tyler had no formal training in history and was an educational innovator. In an era when universities had just begun to move away from a curriculum based on classics and religion, Tyler...