Peter Gay (1923-2015) was an American historian and author who specialized in the history of modern Europe, particularly the 18th and 19th centuries. He was best known for his six-volume work, The Enlightenment, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1969. He also wrote extensively on the history of psychoanalysis, publishing works such as Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988) and The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud (1993-1998).