Scott Reynolds Nelson

Scott Reynolds Nelson is the prizewinning author of five books on 19th-century US history. The New York Times has most recently called him a “fascinating guide to the grim landscape of Reconstruction.” His book, Steel Drivin’ Man (2007), about the life of the African-American folklore legend John Henry, won four national awards including the National Award for Arts Writing and the Merle Curti Prize for best book in US history. A young-adult book he co-wrote with Marc Aronson, Ain’t Nothing But a Man (2007), describes how historians do research. With Carol Sheriff he wrote a social history of the American Civil War entitled A People at War: Civilians and Soldiers in America's Civil War (2008). His book on the history of capitalism, A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America’s Financial Disasters (2012) was named a best business book of the year by Business Week. He has been a research fellow at Harvard University, the Filson Historical Society, the Newberry Library in Chicago, and in 2019-20 was named a Guggenheim fellow. He is at work on a history of cheap food for Basic Books tentatively entitled Oceans of Grain: Food and the Fate of Empires. It explores how cheap American grain helped to destabilize the Ottoman, Qing, and Russian Empires.