At long last, I read @tj-stiles.bsky.social's 2002 biography of Jesse James. Although I moved from Minnesota to Missouri a decade and half ago (now in SW Illinois), I feel like this book finally gave me a key to understanding Missouri's politics and culture.

If you're planing to spend the weekend preparing for the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Monday, but you just don't know enough about the taconite pellets that were in the ship's ill-fated hold, may I recommend a book for you? www.upress.umn.edu/978081669430... 🗃️

Heads up, energy historians, Ty Priest's new book on the history of offshore oil is coming this spring 🗃️ lsupress.org/978080718602...

Alberta company proposing to use wood burned in wildfires to fuel power plants. This reads like an epilogue for the next edition of @johnvaillant.bsky.social's book, _Fire Weather_. www.globenewswire.com/news-release...

I am pleased to report that the 6-7 (juggling hands motion) thing is now popular with elementary kids and local sports mascots and therefore cringe among older Gen Alphas and, thankfully, soon to be extinct.

My local Fox station ran a story about the photo collection my students digitized this fall. Profs, if your students do something cool that’s public-facing, write up a little press release and get it out to local media! fox2now.com/news/illinoi...

As a prof at a regional public, I think this is a funny parody ad campaign featherstone.university

At my university's surplus property warehouse, trying to get this beauty for my office

Schrute Farms today is almost certainly a data center/gas plant, right?

Since the discourse™️ is debating working-class culture and appearance this morning, let me recommend Ryan Murphy’s great new book, _Teamster’s Metropolis_, which is an analysis of the culture and bodies of Teamsters at midcentury. press.umich.edu/Books/T/Team...

Really interesting development. ADM's successful CCS operation at its Decatur, IL, corn mill hasn't seen much coverage, but it may be a sign of things to come. US corn ethanol plants have been piloting CCS for a long time. That's going to attract more attention now.

‘Low-Carbon Histories for Zero-Carbon Futures’ is out today @jofhistgeog.bsky.social - a collective case for thinking historically about energy. doi.org/10.1016/j.jh...

Excellent deep dive into the pressures facing large commodity growers in the Mississippi Valley today and how they evolved from decades of US farm policy. arktimes.com/arkansas-blo...

Digitizing some 1970s posters from our campus archive today. This one advertising a speech by Buckminster Fuller is amazing.

In the mailbag! @jeffmanuel.bsky.social

It's been a while, but I have exciting news! Our department is hiring a Digital Historian with a specialization in Early America. Help us spread the word by sharing this opportunity within your networks. #DigitalHistory #DH #HigherEdJobs jobs.uc.edu/job/Cincinna...

Full program for "The Power of Energy" online conference sponsored by the Hagley Library, 10/30-10/31. Looking forward to this! 🗃️

Not sure how I missed this post, but I did not miss the book in my mail. Cheers @jeffmanuel.bsky.social !!!

"The human race faces two of the greatest challenges that it has ever faced. And these have no real precedent so history is not a very good guide here, but it’s something that we have to face and we have to think about with the tools that history provides us +

Students in my digital archiving studio class have finished a neat collection of late 19th-early 20th century black and white photos from Madison County, Illinois. Check them out if you like midwestern history. Now freely available here: madison-historical.siue.edu/archive/item...

Delighted to see Joel Mokyr among the winners of the Nobel economics prize. Taking history classes with him was a highlight of my time as an undergraduate. We students would sit at a big seminar table and he'd pace around behind us, peppering us with very detailed questions.

“On October 6 I drove by the Society’s modest brick building, surrounded by yellow tape, and saw the moving truck, accompanied by two sheriffs—appropriate for a crime scene, the theft of the history that might have been written using the collection.”

Not to downplay the serious issues it raises, but this graphic from Cerulogy's recent biofuels is funny. Are those all-corn tacos? Is it just the tortilla? I'm now imagining the US Corn Belt growing billions of tacos...

I appreciate WBEZ's scrutiny of higher ed online program managers. (My university is one of those mentioned with a Risepoint contract.) As @tressiemcphd.bsky.social has said for years, with OPMs the for-profit college model in now working *within* public higher ed. www.wbez.org/education/20...

It's the official publication day for ETHANOL: A HEMISPHERIC HISTORY FOR THE FUTURE OF BIOFUELS. Want to know why the US turns 40 percent of the corn crop into fuel? How the US and Brazil became the world's two largest ethanol producers? Tom Rogers and I have answers. www.oupress.com/978080619601...

Hi Jeff, I have a book on the making of Britain's fossil fuel economy in the works, which should be out next year if all goes well. In the meantime, I warmly recommend Emma Griffin's introduction to the Industrial Revolution and Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson's book on slavery and industry.

Historians: if you had to pick one accessible text for an undergraduate student starting to explore the early British Industrial Revolution, what would you recommend? TIA 🗃️

Finally read this essay. Although I agree many profs are afraid to disagree for structural reasons, there's one big exception: unions. Faculty who otherwise seek consensus often have no problem disagreeing—vocally and publicly—to oppose unionization. www.chronicle.com/article/why-...

Grant Peterson—founder of Rivendell Cycles—has a blog that's one of my favorite things on the web. This month's edition has a long rant about chopsticks, some history, and this ending, which nicely sums up the current vibes:

Proposed new 28th amendment: all federal officials shall be limited to one hour of screen time on workdays, two hours on the weekends.

A reminder that coal mining has a *long* tail. Meijer is building a new store near me and it's months behind schedule because they've have to remediate underground room-and-pillar coal mines that closed a century ago.

Historical photos are on my mind since I'm running an archival digitization studio with students this semester. Trying to get students thinking deeply about still photos, I'll be using this excellent analysis by Martha Sandweiss. Looks like a great book. lithub.com/what-a-19th-... 🗃️

Hey SIUE, when does our most famous dropout get an honorary degree?

As others have said here, the experiential, bodies-in-a-classroom-together aspect of college teaching feels better right now than it has in a long time. The always insightful Carlo Rotella has a good explanation:

Our October 2025 issue is now available! If you are a print subscriber look for it in the mail! #envhist #envhum @chicagojournals.bsky.social www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/eh/current

bow to your king 🎃

Energy historians: the Hagley Museum and Library is hosting "The Power of Energy" conference on October 30-31. It's an online conference and registration is now open. This will be a great chance to hear some exciting new research. Hope to see you there (virtually) www.hagley.org/research/con... 🗃️

Selling point or warning label?

I'm a sucker for Mississippi River paddling stories. This one has an impressive list of wildlife encounters. agwaterdesk.bluelena.io/index.php?ac...

“Just like the farm crisis in the 2000s, which we solved by turning corn into an energy crop, that’s, in essence, what we’re probably going to do now—turn soybeans and some other minor crops into energy as a way of providing a support base for farmers.” ambrook.com/offrange/sup...

Good piece untangling the US soybean export crisis this season. I’d argue that the big contours of US ag policy for the past 25 years have been downstream from the enormous impacts of Chinese demand. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/b...

Fun story and somehow not surprising that the 1980s punk scene in Akron, Ohio, turned out both Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO and a guy who become a Henry David Thoreau impersonator www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/s...

One month until publication for _Ethanol: A Hemispheric History for the Future of Biofuels_. Tom Rogers and I lay out the linked history of the US and Brazilian ethanol programs and explain why they matter for energy, climate, and politics. Pre-orders available now! www.oupress.com/978080619601...

This isn’t getting much attention beyond St. Louis, but the machinists’ strike at Boeing Defense—now a month old—is happening right at a major fault line in the new GOP. www.missourinet.com/2025/09/04/s...

People ask how I can study biofuels since they’re so boring. If that’s you, check out this podcast. It has a polygamist sect that’s scamming the government, an Armenian gangster in a chrome Lambo, and gun-toting EPA cops. I’m telling you, biofuels are *wild* podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

I pulled Steven Stoll's _Ramp Hollow_ off the shelf today and realized the 1st paperback edition opens with a blurb from JD Vance and the book's last paragraph has the line, "The brutality of enclosure will only cease when we cease to regard people and landscapes as instruments of wealth."

Tensions over which western hemisphere producer nations—especially the US versus Brazil—will supply commodities to a rising East Asia will be one of the central storylines of the 21st century. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/b...

Bricks, boarded-up windows, and it's somehow beautiful. St. Louis distilled to its essence.

What’s such a shame here is that the bicentennial was far from perfect, but it invited a generation of Americans into the *process* of history, launching oral history projects, community events, etc. This only offers history as something to be consumed, which is a step backwards.

We are on the verge of a new Cold War, defined not by an ideological contest over the proper relationship between politics and the economy, but over the metabolic basis of modernity. Call it the Green Entente vs. the Axis of Petrostates. My latest: foreignpolicy.com/2025/09/01/e...