About the Authors

David Vigilante

David Vigilante is a historian and educator who served for many years as Associate Director of the National Center for History in the Schools (NCHS) at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has a Master of Arts degree in Latin American history from the University of Alabama and has pursued post-graduate studies in American history at UCLA. He served as a high school teacher for 30 years, the majority of which was teaching in the regular history and Advanced Placement history programs in the San Diego Unified School District. In 1968 he was selected to serve as co-chair of the American Historical Association’s History Education Project for Southern California. The program’s goal was to foster collaboration between the university and secondary schools. At the end of his teaching career, he served as Coordinator for the History-Social Studies for San Diego County. Following retirement as a classroom teacher, Vigilante worked as a consultant for the California Department of Education’s assessment division.

Vigilante was a member of the Curriculum Task Force that developed the National History Standards and co-edited Bring History Alive! - A Sourcebook for United States History and the companion volume for world history. He has written teaching units, published by the NCHS, in United States history on the Washington and Lincoln administrations, Philadelphia during the American Revolution, the Bill of Rights, Spanish and Pueblo clashes in the Southwest, Texas independence and the Mexican War, Reconstruction, and the Red Scare of the 1920s. He also developed teaching guides on the Cold War for the New York Times’ "Live From the Past" series, and wrote online lessons for the Library of Congress’s American Memory website as well as suggestions for teacher and student use of the new collections as they were digitized.

Vigilante collaborated with colleagues in writing educational programs to support The Huntington Library’s special exhibits, The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America; The Great Experiment: George Washington and the American Republic; and Land of Golden Dreams: California in the Gold Rush Decade. He developed lesson plans for four other Huntington Library exhibits, Created Equal: Inventing the American Republic; Paradise Found, Paradise Lost? - Conflicting Visions of the American West; European Beginnings: The Widening World of Books and Readers; and Seeking Identity and Meaning: British and American Literature. In 1997-1998, he served as content consultant on civics and United States history for a series of 15 video programs produced by Intelecom, Pasadena, California, for the U.S. Department of Education and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Vigilante has received several education awards including the $25,000 National Teacher Award presented by the Milken Family Foundation for Excellence in Teaching and the San Diego Press Club’s "Headliner Award." And, over the years, his students have won myriad prestigious awards and competitions as well, including the Constitution and Bill of Rights Annual National Competition and commendations at the White House for outstanding efforts in social studies and American history.