James T. Patterson (born 1935) is an American historian of twentieth-century United States history and professor emeritus at Brown University. He earned a B.A. from Williams College and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University, taught at Indiana University, and joined Brown's faculty in the early 1970s. His books include Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (Oxford History of the United States), Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy, and The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America. He lives in Rhode Island.
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