Life
Born in 1945, he was raised in southern California, the oldest of eight children. Several of his siblings have been in the music business, including Danny Faragher, Jimmy Faragher, Tommy Faragher, Davey Faragher, Pammy Faragher, and Marty Faragher. He graduated from the University of California, Riverside in 1967, did social work for several years, then graduated from Yale University with a Ph.D. in 1977. He taught at Mount Holyoke College. He now teaches at Yale University. He assisted in the writing of Out of Many, A History of the American People.>

Awards

• 1980 Frederick Jackson Turner Award of the Organization of American Historians
• 1993 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography
• 2000 Western Heritage Award, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
• 2001 Caughey Prize of the Western History Association for the Best Book in Western History

Works

• cite book| title=Women and Men on the Overland Trail | url=| year=1979| publisher=Yale University Press| isbn= 978-0-300-08924-0 (reprint 2001)
• cite book| title=Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie | url=| publisher=Yale University Press| year= 1986| isbn= 978-0-300-04263-4
• cite book| title=Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer | url=| publisher=Macmillan| year= 1993| isbn=978-0-8050-3007-5
• cite book| title=The encyclopedia of colonial and revolutionary America| editor=John Mack Faragher| publisher=Da Capo Press| year= 1996| isbn= 978-0-306-80687-2
• cite book| title=The American West: A New Interpretive History | url=| authors=Robert V. Hine, John Mack Faragher| publisher=Yale University Press| year= 2000| isbn= 978-0-300-07835-0
• cite book| title=A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from their American Homeland | url=| publisher=W. W. Norton & Company| year= 2005| isbn=978-0-393-05135-3
• cite book| title=Frontiers: A Short History of the American West| url=| authors=Robert V. Hine, John Mack Faragher| publisher=Yale University Press| year= 2007| isbn= 978-0-300-11710-3