Michael G. Kammen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Cornell’s Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture Emeritus, died Nov. 29 in Ithaca at the age of 77.

He arrived at Cornell in 1965 as an assistant professor of history, served on the Department of History faculty until his retirement in 2008, then returned in the fall 2013 semester to teach – all the while writing or editing more than three dozen books in diverse areas of history.

Kammen’s “People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization” (1972) won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for history. “A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American Culture” (1986) was awarded the Francis Parkman Prize and the Henry Adams Prize....