Thomas A. Bailey (1903-1983) taught history at his alma mater, Stanford University, for nearly forty years. Long regarded as one of the nation's premier historians of American diplomacy, he was honored by his colleagues in 1968 with election to the presidencies of both the Organization of American Historians and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. He was the author, editor, or co-editor of some twenty-books, but the work in which he took the most pride was The American Pageant through which, he liked to say, he had taught American history to several million students.