Local Writer. National Prestige.
We have so many extraordinary writers living right here in mid-Missouri, and it's always a pleasure to welcome them to participate in Unbound along with authors from further afield. One of Columbia's most prestigious authors is MU History Professor Steven Watts. The author of many acclaimed biographies, Steven will be discussing the art of biography and his latest work, JFK and the Masculine Mystique: Sex and Power on the New Frontier.
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Steven has won several prizes at MU, including the Kemper Teaching Award, the Faculty-Alumni Award, and the system-wide Thomas Jefferson Award for research, teaching, and creativity. He also served two terms as chair of the Department of History.
He has published seven books: The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America, 1790-1820 (1987); The Romance of Real Life: Charles Brockden Brown and the Origins of American Culture (1994); The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life (1997); The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (2005); Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream (2008); Self-Help Messiah: Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern America (2013); and JFK and the Masculine Mystique: Sex and Power on the New Frontier (2016). He has published many articles and essays in venues such as The Journal of American History, American Quarterly, Chronicle of Higher Education, Newsweek, The Nation, National Review, and Salon.
Watts has made numerous media appearances on NPR, C-SPAN, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox, Bloomberg News, Telemundo, the BBC, and dozens of radio stations around the United States and in western Europe. He has contributed to documentary films made in the United States, Germany, and Brazil on the subjects of his biographies. Most recently, he has been a consultant and on-screen commentator for the History Channel’s “The Men Who Built America” (2012) and two PBS films: “American Experience: Henry Ford” (2013) and “American Experience: Walt Disney” (2015).