I am an environmental historian, writer, and professor. Taking the American West as my main focus, I seek to discover how people have understood their place in nature through time and then communicate that history.
Currently, I am writing about various battles over public lands, including a book tentatively titled This Land is Our Land and a project that investigates a campaign to stop an open-pit mine proposed for a wilderness area in Washington’s Cascade Range. To date, I have published three books: Idaho’s Place: A New History of the Gem State (2014); The Environmental Justice: William O. Douglas and American Conservation (2009); and United States West Coast: An Environmental History (2007). Besides these book-length projects, I have published many scholarly articles and essays, many available here. I have a regular column with High Country News called “Reckoning with History,” all linked here.
A lifelong Northwesterner, I live with my wife and family in Pullman, Washington.