He twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for earlier works; he published more than 30 books on United States political and literary figures and the history of the American South.

Majoring in history and sociology, Donald earned his bachelor's degree from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi.

He wrote more than thirty books, including well-received biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Wolfe and Charles Sumner.

Donald received the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography twice, in 1961 for Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War and in 1988 for Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe.

[7] In his introduction, Carl Sandburg, the poet and Lincoln biographer, hailed Donald's first book as the answer to scholars' prayers: "When is someone going to do the life of Bill Herndon.

Donald's evenhanded approach to Sumner, Potter concluded, was a model for biographers working with a difficult subject.