Mike Wallace is Distinguished Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), and Director of the Gotham Center for New York City History. He is the co-author, with Edwin G. Burrows, of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, which won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for History. Gotham II, which he is writing on his own, will carry the story down through the 20th century.

Wallace was born and raised in New York City and its environs. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Columbia University, studying with Richard Hofstadter, with whom he collaborated on American Violence: A Documentary History. He is also the author of Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory, winner of the Historic Preservation Book Prize, and of Terrorism. He has taught history to police officers and others at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York since 1971, served as adviser and on-camera commentator in Ric Burns’ film New York: A Documentary History, and for 25 years has helped publish and edit the Radical History Review.

Wallace lives in Brooklyn, New York.