Ted Steinberg
Ted Steinberg (born 1961) is Adeline Barry Davee Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University.[1]
Steinberg is the author of several books in U.S. history that focus on the relationship between ecological forces and social power. His best known works include Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (2002); Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (2000); and American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn (2006). His most recent book, Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York (2014), reinterprets the New York metropolitan area’s history from an environmental perspective and argues against the commonly held view that geography determined the city’s destiny.
His books have received the following prizes: National Outdoor Book Award for "Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History," 2002; Ohio Academy of History Outstanding Publication Award for Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America, 2001; Co-winner, Willard Hurst Prize in American Legal History, for Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England, 1992; and the Old Sturbridge Village E. Harold Hugo Memorial Book Prize (best book on the history and material culture of rural New England) for Nature Incorporated, 1992.
Steinberg received his BA in 1983 from Tufts University. He received a Ph.D. in history from Brandeis University in 1989, where he worked under the guidance of Donald Worster, David Hackett Fischer, and Morton Horwitz.
He has been the recipient of support from the Michigan Society of Fellows (1990–1993), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1996), the American Council of Learned Societies Burkhardt Fellowship (2001), the National Endowment for the Humanities (2010), and Yale University, where he was the B. Benjamin Zucker Fellow in 2006.
Publications
- Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England (1991). ISBN 9780521527118
- Slide Mountain, or the Folly of Owning Nature (1995). ISBN 9780520207097
- Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster (2000). ISBN 9780195309683
- Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (2002). ISBN 9780199797394
- American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn (2006). ISBN 9780393329308
- Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York (2014). ISBN 9781476741246