I’m a historian, writer, photographer, and geohumanist. I study landscapes and environments from the hyperlocal to the planetary. My temporal expertise is the long nineteenth century; my regional expertise is the American West. I enjoy daily walks and decadal research projects.

I have written five books, including:

On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape (2008), winner of the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians for the best-written non-fiction book on an American theme, a literary award that honors the “union of the historian and the artist.”

Trees in Paradise: A California History (2013), winner of the Ray Allen Billington Prize from the the Organization of American Historians for the best book on the history of Native and/or settler peoples in frontier, border, and borderland zones of intercultural contact in any century to the present.

Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees (2022), winner of the Jacques Barzun Prize from the American Philosophical Society for distinguished work in American or European cultural history.

I have received fellowships, grants, and awards from institutions such as the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Dallas Institute, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, and the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University.

Born and raised in Provo, Utah, I left my heart in California, and now I live and work in Philadelphia, where I’m the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at Penn.