Publications
The list of selected staff publications may be searched by keyword or author and can be sorted by year.
A brief history of the world’s largest engineering organization and how its missions have evolved in accord with shifting public values.
A survey of publishing trends in the history of technology and environmental history that focuses on the growing number of works that have addressed the interplay of technology and the environment. It also suggests a range of opportunities for future research.
A biography of the New York City engineer who championed the contributions of engineers to city planning during the first two decades of the twentieth century.
Reflections on how popular opinions about the appropriate role of public enterprises have devolved since the founding of the American Public Works Association in 1937, and how historical inquiry can contribute to society’s understanding of this trend and its consequences.
Examines the combined efforts of the nation’s leading scientific and engineering societies to provide technically trained staff to the U.S. Congress and its support agencies.
A biographical sketch of the chemical engineer renowned for his contributions to the refining of gasoline and aviation
fuels.
A collection of essays that explore the reciprocal influences of technology and the environment during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
A review essay of Mark Wyman’s book, Hard Rock Epic: Western Miners and the Industrial Revolution, 1860–1910.
Reflections on the research opportunities that exist for those historians willing to analyze the interconnections between technology and the natural environment.
A biographical sketch of the San Francisco engineer best known for his work on the controversial dam built in Yosemite National Park’s Hetch Hetchy valley.
This history of the largest and most controversial water project ever built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers interweaves analyses of changing environmental values, engineering, and pork-barrel politics. Recipient of the Public Works Historical Society’s 1994 Abel Wolman Award and the 1995 Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award.
A biographical sketch of the first woman to manage a major transit system in the United States. Turner headed the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority from 1983 to 1990.
A collection of essays addressing the history of tunnels and tunneling from ancient times to the present, including discussions of the politics and construction of the Channel Tunnel and the ill-fated Super-conducting Super Collider. This richly illustrated volume also includes a detailed account of the Smithsonian’s Tunnels! exhibition.
A discussion of two prize-winning documentaries—Kelly Duane’s Monumental: David Brower’s Fight for Wild America and Bonnie Kreps’s Arctic Dance: The Mardy Murie Story—and the contributions of film biographies to the teaching of environmental history.
A history of the U.S. government’s support of chemistry instrumentation, 1950–1990.
A historical assessment of President Jimmy Carter’s environmental record. Recipient of the Society for History in the Federal Govern-ment’s 1999 Charles Thomson Prize.
A historical assessment of President Ronald Reagan’s environmental record.
Reflections on the expansion and internationalization of environmental justice as a field of study.
A historical overview of the patterns of collaboration among investigators in different fields of science and how federal science policy has attempted to account for those changes.
An examination of the U. S. Congress’s evolving need for scientific and technical advice, the inherent difficulties in fulfilling this need, and a historical assessment of the mechanisms put in place to provide the legislative branch with independent technical counsel.
A review essay of Orrin H. Pilkey and Katherine L. Dixon’s critique of coastal engineering and beach restoration, The Corps and the Shore.
An evaluation of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ sesquicentennial exhibition, which explores the profound—and frequently unappreciated—contributions of public works to the functioning of modern society.
Analyzes the maturation of environmentalism in the American South during the 1970s as expressed in the opposition to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ massive waterway in Mississippi and Alabama. Recipient of the Society for History in the Federal Government’s 1992 James Madison Prize.
