Home
I'm a writer and historian living in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Burnsville, North Carolina.
My most recent book is The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes, a trade biography published by Oxford University Press in 2025.
My current book project is "The Killing of William K. Storey: A Historian Explores the Assassination of His Great-Grandfather in Ireland."
I am also the author of The First World War: A Concise Global History (Rowman & Littlefield, third edition, 2020); Writing History: A Guide for Students (Oxford University Press, sixth edition, 2020); Guns, Race and Power in Colonial Southern Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2008); and Science and Power in Colonial Mauritius (University of Rochester Press, 1998).
I was awarded the Sidney M. Edelstein Book Prize by the Society for the History of Technology. I have also had fellowship support from the NEH, the MacArthur Foundation, and Fulbright.
I grew up on Long Island and went to Phillips Academy (Andover) for high school. I earned my bachelor's degree in history from Harvard University and my master's and doctorate in history from Johns Hopkins University. I was a postdoc in science and technology studies at Cornell University and I taught in Harvard University's Expository Writing Program.
From 1999 to 2026, I taught at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, where I was Professor of History and Sanderson Chair in Arts and Sciences. I was named a statewide winner of the Carnegie-CASE Teacher of the Year Award, and I was twice honored with a Mississippi Humanities Council Teacher Award. I am now an emeritus professor.