Alan Taylor, a University of California, Davis, history professor, has won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize in history for his 1995 book, "William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic." The prestigious prizes are presented annually by Columbia University. Taylor will receive $3,000. Earlier this spring, Taylor won another major award for the same book -- the Bancroft Prize in American history awarded to him in late March at Columbia University; he was one of two scholars to receive that prize. Taylor's book, published by Alfred A. Knopf, chronicles the life of the founder of Cooperstown, N.Y., and the father of the 19th-century American novelist James Fenimore Cooper. William Cooper advanced his fortunes after the Revolutionary War by gaining control of large tracts of land and subdividing them, and improved his prospects in life through a program of self-education and political aspiration. Taylor, 40, has been a professor at UC Davis since 1994, specializing in early American history and the history of the American West. Previously he taught at Boston University, the College of William and Mary and Colby College. He was a National Endowment for the Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Early American History and Culture at William and Mary and received research fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the National Humanities Center and the Huntington Library. He is a graduate of Colby College and Brandeis University, where he received his Ph.D. in American history in 1986. He is also the author of "Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760-1820." His "William Cooper's Town" received the 1995 New York State Historical Association Manuscript Award.