Axtell was born in Endicott, New York on December 20, 1941 to Laura England and Arthur James Axtell, partners in a small accounting firm. In 1946, Axtell's parents divorced, and he moved with his father to his grandparents' small farm in Sidney, New York, where his father remarried in 1948.
Axtell attended Sidney Central High School, graduating in 1959, and was recruited to Yale University to play basketball. He switched to track and field as a freshman and set school records in the indoor long-jump and outdoor triple-jump. Axtell graduated from Yale in 1963, having also attended the Oxford International Summer School the previous year. He then began pursuing a PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he once again participated in athletics, breaking Cambridge's long-jump record and being chosen for the All-England university basketball team due to his high scoring on the Cambridge team. Axtell later claimed he had finished his dissertation in only two years to avoid having to guard Bill Bradley on the Oxford team the following year. He earned his PhD in 1967, and his dissertation on “The Educational Writings of John Locke” was published the following year by Cambridge University Press.[4]
Books
James Axtell (January 1968). The Educational Writings of John Locke: A Critical Edition. Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-04073-6.
James Axtell (January 1986). The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America. Oxford University Press. ISBN0-19-504154-2.: History Book Club; Gilbert Chinard Prize, Society for French Historical Studies, 1985; Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize, American Society for Ethnohistory, 1986; Albert B. Corey Prize, American Historical Association-Canadian Historical Association, 1986