Perez Zagorin

Perez Zagorin

Perez Zagorin, 88, a leading historian of the 17th-century English Revolution and a critic of Marxist interpretations of history, died Sunday, April 26, 2009, at George Washington University Hospital of complications following open-heart surgery. He lived in Washington, D.C. Services have been held.

Since 1992, Dr. Zagorin had been a research fellow at the University of Virginia's Edgar F. Shannon Center for Advanced Studies. He established his reputation as a prominent scholar in 1954 with "A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution."

Other books, including "The Court and the Country: The Beginning of the English Revolution" (1969) and the two-volume "Rebels and Rulers: 1500-1600" (1982), examined political and ideological trends across Europe.

His 1999 book about the 17th-century English philosopher Francis Bacon was praised in the British Times Literary Supplement as "the best single-volume study available."

Dr. Zagorin also wrote about poet John Milton and the development of the idea of religious tolerance in Europe. In 2005, he published a book for general readers about the Greek historian Thucydides. His final book, "Hobbes and the Law of Nature," to be published later this year, examines the moral and political thought of 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes.

Dr. Zagorin was born in Chicago and was a graduate of the University of Chicago. He received a master's degree and PhD in history from Harvard University in 1947 and 1952, respectively.

During World War II, he worked in the Office of War Information. He was also a labor organizer.

Early in his career, he taught at Amherst College in Massachusetts and Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Because of his youthful left-wing political views, he was ostracized during the McCarthy era. He moved to Canada and taught for 10 years at McGill University in Montreal. He also taught at Johns Hopkins University before joining the faculty of the University of Rochester in New York in 1965. He spent 25 years at Rochester and was chairman of the history department.

Dr. Zagorin often focused on the idea of revolution and political unrest, and later in his career he often engaged in spirited public debates with other historians over what he considered oversimplified Marxist and postmodernist interpretations of history.

Zagorin was a longtime member of the editorial board and board member of "The Journal of the History of Ideas", devoted to intellectual history. At the time of his death, he was a fellow at University of Virginia's Edgar F. Shannon, Jr. Center for Advanced Studies and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Rochester. Over the span of his long career, he was also a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others.

Perez Zagorin was born in 1920 in Chicago, Illinois, of parents who both immigrated from Russia. Zagorin was raised by his mother after his father died when he was a small boy; he grew close to his maternal grandfather, a carpenter, who spoke Yiddish at home. He later taught at Amherst, Vassar, McGill University, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Rochester, where he was chairman of the history department.

His wife of 61 years, artist Honor? Sharrer, died April 17, 2009.

Survivors include a son, Adam Zagorin of Washington; a brother; and two grandsons.

Original obituary appeared in The Washington Post on May 25, 2009.


This obituary was originally published in the Daily Progress.