Jerome Lee Shneidman
American historian
Jerome Lee Shneidman (June 20, 1929 – July 29, 2008) was an American historian of medieval and early American history. His academic contributions were predominantly in the fields of medieval history, psychohistory, and early American history.
Early life
Shneidman was born as the eldest of two sons on June 20, 1929 in New York City to a family of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. He grew up in the Bronx, but moved when he was 13 to the Upper West Side, where he would live for the rest of his life. His father Bernard was a dedicated Marxist and his mother, Fanya Raskin, supported their family with a modest laundry business. Shneidman later said that his youth was comfortable enough; authors of his obituary quoted him as saying, "[there] was always enough money for books, magazines, and the right [i.e. left wing] causes", but often not enough money for clothes or doctors.
Shneidman was diagnosed with melanoma when he was about six months old. A major skin graft rearranged elements of his body and he spent a lot of time in hospital over the next 13 years. Shneidman was physically altered by his numerous surgeries.
The public source identifies “Jerome Lee Shneidman” as american historian. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Jerome, Shneidman and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6182810. VIAF identifies the subject as 15640088. The Library of Congress control number is n86130086. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1929 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jerome Lee Shneidman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.