Frederick W. Marks
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frederick W. Marks III (November 13, 1940 – January 16, 2025) was an American historian and Catholic apologist. As a scholar, he wrote and taught extensively on American diplomatic history. As a proponent of Roman Catholicism, he published dozens of articles and tracts and spoke extensively in public.
Marks attended Loyola High School in New York City, and attained his B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross in 1962 and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1968.[1] His doctoral dissertation, "The Impact of Foreign Affairs on the United States Constitution, 1783–1788," was supervised by Bradford Perkins.[2] Other members of the doctoral committee were Professors Samuel J. Eldersveld, Shaw Livermore Jr., and Gordon S. Wood. Marks taught at the University of Michigan from 1967 to 1968, at Purdue University from 1968 to 1973 and at St. John's University from 1974 to 1979. At St. John's, he supervised the doctoral dissertation of graduate student Daniel W. Fitz-Simons, who had been in Navy Intelligence and the DIA before teaching at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College.[3] He was the author of four books and dozens of articles on history.[4] His scholarly publications are characterized by multi-archival research overseas. In addition to utilizing repositories all over the United States, his work took him to Germany, France, England, Scotland, Canada, Guatemala, and the Republic of China. Each of his books on American diplomatic history contains extensive endnotes and bibliographies.
In the field of Roman Catholicism, Marks wrote six books and scores of full-length articles, seventeen of which appeared in leading journals for the Catholic clergy.[5] In addition, he published a handbook for engaged and newly married Roman Catholic couples.[6] It was translated into Spanish and Indonesian in 2008. The last years of his writing life were devoted to the Christian view of suffering and what people perceive as failure.[7] In a note about his death, the New Oxford Review called Marks a "biblical scholar par excellence."[8]
