Berlin grew up in The Bronx, New York, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1970. He wrote extensively on American history and the larger Atlantic world in the 18th and 19th centuries. Berlin focused in particular on the history of slavery in the United States. His first book, ', was awarded the Best First Book Prize by the National Historical Society. Berlin's work is concerned with what he termed the "striking diversity" in African-American life under slavery. He argues that this diversity is especially evident with attention to the differences in African-American life under slavery across geography and time. In his 1998 book Many Thousands Gone, which covers the history of North American slavery through the 18th century, Berlin differentiates among four regions and their respective forms of slavery: the Chesapeake, the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia, the Lower Mississippi Valley, and the North. He further differentiates each of these regions across three distinct "generations," emphasizing shifts over time. Berlin argues that geographic and temporal differences in the first two centuries of North American slavery had important consequences for African American culture and society. He founded the and served as director until 1991. The project's multi-volume ' has twice been awarded the Thomas Jefferson Prize of the Society for the History of the Federal Government, as well as the J. Franklin Jameson Prize of the American Historical Association for outstanding editorial achievement. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. In 2003, Berlin was the chief advisor for the HBO documentary Unchained Memories. In 2007, he was an advising scholar for the award-winning PBS documentary Prince Among Slaves, produced by .
Selected bibliography
Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South Tells the story of the free black men and women who lived in the South before the Civil War.
Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867 Selections from the holdings of the National Archives; series one, volume three, ', edited by Ira Berlin, Thavolia Glymph, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland and Julie Saville.
' Collection of first-hand accounts from the National Archives.
Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution, edited by Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman Essays.
, edited by Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan Essays.
Generations of Captivity: A History of African American Slaves 2003 Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association; Anisfeld-Wolf Book Award for nonfiction.
The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations
