About Me
I’m an independent scholar specializing in the history of early America and Native Americans. For three decades, my career focused on university teaching as a tenured professor including courses on colonial America, the American Revolution, the African-American experience, and southern Africa. I also led “great books” seminars on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As of 2024, I am occupied full-time in research and writing.
Earning my PhD in history from Indiana University, I have held fellowships with or received grants from Fulbright, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Gilder-Lehrman Institute. My first book, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, was awarded an annual Hendricks Award for the best book on the early Dutch American experience, and I am a continuing fellow of the Holland Society of American and the New Netherland Institute.
My current focus is a book-length study of the history of wampum, strings and belts of beads crafted from marine shell and used ceremonially by the Native people of northeastern North America.
Meanwhile, I maintain an avocational interest in board games, science fiction, flyfishing, RPGs, the American West, philosophy, and the environment.
