Adam I. P. Smith was born in the Northeast of England. He read History at Oxford before going on to do postgraduate work at Sheffield, Cambridge, and Harvard Universities. He taught at University College London before being appointed Edward Orsborn Professor of US Politics and Political History at Oxford. He is also the Director of the Rothermere American Institute and a Fellow of University College, Oxford. His previous books have included The Stormy Present: Conservatism and the Problem of Slavery in Northern Politics (2017), which won the Jefferson Davis Prize and was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize.