ABSTRACT
Framing the Questions: A Talk by Ira Berlin, for Middle School Students and Teachers at the Salk School for Science, New York City Ira Berlin has written extensively on American history and the larger Atlantic world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly the history of slavery. °roughout his long and distinguished career, he has been the recipient of many awards and distinctions. His žrst book, Slaves Without Masters: °e Free Negro in the Antebellum South (1975), won the Best First Book Prize awarded by the National Historical Society. In 1999, his study of African-American life between 1619 and 1819, entitled Many °ousands Gone: °e First Two Centuries of Slavery in Mainland North America, was awarded the Bancro› Prize for the best book in American history by Columbia University; the Frederick Douglass Prize by the Gilder-Lehrman Institute; the Owsley Prize by the Southern Historical Association; and the Rudwick Prize by the Organization of American Historians. In 2002, he was inaugurated as president of the Organization of American Historians and in 2004 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
