Neil Baldwin was born in New York City and grew up there, attending the Horace Mann School. He was a Visiting Student at the University of Manchester, England, and received his B.A. in History from the University of Rochester and his Ph.D. in Modern American Poetry from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His doctoral dissertation, a complete descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts and letters of William Carlos Williams in the collections of SUNY/Buffalo and Yale University, was published by G. K. Hall and Company in 1978. The title of this lecture is, "The American Revelation: Ten Ideals That Shaped Our Country from the Puritans to the Cold War."