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Steven E. Ozment (born February 21, 1939, McComb, Mississippi) is an American historian of early modern and modern Germany, the European family, and the Protestant Reformation. From 1990 to 2015, he was the McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History at Harvard University. He is now Professor Emeritus.
Raised in Arkansas, Ozment has lived in New England since 1960. The father of five children, he presently lives in Newbury, Massachusetts with his wife Susan Schweizer, Vice President and Senior Quality Manager at J.P. Morgan Chase.
Ozment has taught at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Germany, and at Yale and Stanford as well as Harvard. The co-author of both Western and world civilization textbooks, he taught Western Civilization at Yale, Stanford, and Harvard, and continues to teach it today.
Ozment has authored 10 books. His Age of Reform, 1250-1550 (1980) won the Schaff History Prize (1981) and was nominated for the 1981 National Book Award. Five of his books have been selections of the History Book Club and several have been translated into European and Asian languages.
A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People came out in 2005. Ozment's study of the German world of artist Lucas Cranach the Elder was published by Yale University Press in June, 2013, under the title, The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation.
Major works
- Homo spiritualis: a comparative study of the anthropology of Johannes Tauler, Jean Gerson and Martin Luther (1509-16) in the context of their theological thought. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969.
- ed., Jean Gerson: selections from A Deo exivit, Contra curiositatem studentium and De mystica theologia speculative. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969.
- ed., The Reformation in Medieval Perspective. Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1971.
- Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideology and Social Protest in the Sixteenth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973.
- The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975; 1977.
- co-author, The Western Heritage. New York, NY: MacMillan, 1979; 1983; 1986; 1990; 1994; 1997; 2000; 2003.
- The Age of Reform, 1250-1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980; 1981.
- ed., Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research. St. Louis, MO: Center for Reformation Research, 1982.
- When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983; 1985.
- co-author, The Heritage of World Civilizations. New York, NY: MacMillan, 1986; 1989; 1993; 1996; 1999; 2001; 2004.
- Magdalena and Balthasar: An Intimate Portrait of Life in 16th Century Europe Revealed in the Letters of a Nuremberg Husband and Wife. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1986; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989.
- ed., Religion and Culture in the Renaissance and Reformation. Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1989.
- ed. & trans., Three Behaim Boys: Growing Up in Early Modern Germany. A Chronicle of Their Lives. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.
- Protestants: The Birth Of a Revolution. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1993; 1994; London: HarperCollins, 1993.
- The Bürgermeister's Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth-Century German Town. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1996; New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1997.
- Flesh and Spirit: A Study of Private Life in Early Modern Germany. New York, NY: Viking/Penguin, 1999; 2001.
- Ancestors: The Loving Family in Old Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
- A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2004; 2005; London: Granta, 2005.
- The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013.