Alan Taylor received his B.A. from Colby College and his Ph.D. from Brandeis University. He has taught at Colby College, the College of William & Mary, Boston University, and the University of California at Davis, where he is Professor of History. He is the author of Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760-1820 (1990); William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (1996), and American Colonies: The Settlement of North America (The Penguin History of the United States, Vol. 1, 2001).