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Research interests
In 2003, the University of Pennsylvania Press published my first book (the cover is pictured above). The book looks at trains, newspapers and department stores in Philadelphia between 1876 and 1926 and reflects my interest in how economic and technological changes affect everyday life. Click on the cover to learn more about the book.
In May 2008, The Edwin Mellen Press published a book I co-edited with Leonard Schlup of a collection of the letters and speeches of President Warren G. Harding. For more information, click here.
I have just finished a book that looks at spectacles of modernity (read really cool and high tech stuff) at the Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia in 1876. It is currently be read by possible publishers.
I am also working on three research projects, one looks at a team of colonial revival architects who, in the early-twentieth century, dismantled old houses for their parts in order to give new structures an authentic feel. This, like the Centennial project, is another opportunity for me to consider how previous generations have dealt somewhat ambivalently with their conceptions of modernity. Two years ago, I began my another major project that looks at how Philadelphia and Glasgow both developed similar images as the workshop of the world in the late-nineteenth century. This will allow me to explore my long standing fascination with the contested terrain that is civic self image by considering how competing constituencies in both cities helped to create similar views of the Victorian industrial metropolis. I'm also working on a biography of George B. Roberts, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad from 1880 to 1897. This book will allow me to consider the intersection of technology and economics in more detail. Was Roberts a "robber baron" or was he an "empire builder" or was he a bit of both?
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