Michael Burns is a former child actor who went on to a distinguished career as a historian, writer, and college professor. He is now retired and raising thoroughbred horses in Kentucky. He was familiar to television audiences of the early 1960s as the teenage character, "Barnaby West", on the popular Wagon Train (1957) series. After other TV and film credits in his late teens and early 20s, Burns left acting to pursue his interest in history, graduating from the University of California. He earned a Ph. D. from Yale University in 1977 and wrote an acclaimed history book, "Dreyfus", about the Dreyfus Affair. Between 1980-2002, Burns was a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.