Dr. Patrick Spero is an award-winning historian who has published widely on the era of the American Revolution. He is the author of four books. They are Frontier Country: The Politics of War in Early Pennsylvania (2016), which was named a staff pick by the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2017; Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776 (2018), winner of the Philadelphia Athenaeum’s Literary Award and a finalist for the Journal of the American Revolution’s best book of the year; The Scientist Turned Spy: André Michaux, Thomas Jefferson, and the Kentucky Conspiracy of 1793 (2024); and The Other Presidency: Thomas Jefferson and the American Philosophical Society (2024). He is also the co-editor of The American Revolution Reborn: New Perspectives for the 21st Century (2016), a book that one reviewer said “will surely secure a place in the historiographical pantheon.”
Before returning to the APS as CEO, Dr. Spero was the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library. He has also held positions as the Historian at the David Library of the American Revolution and served on the faculty of Williams College, where he taught courses on the American presidency, leadership, and the American Revolution. His first position after receiving his Ph.D. was as a postdoctoral fellow at the APS, where he spent two years surveying the Society’s vast manuscript holdings before 1850 and designed the APS Library’s first digital guide.
In recognition of his scholarly and administrative accomplishments, Dr. Spero is an elected member of the Royal Historical Society in London, the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Lyon, France, the American Antiquarian Society, and the American Philosophical Society. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and B.A. from James Madison University.