Ohio University Press Experts

Authors

• Phillip G. Payne
• Thomas Zeller

Topics

• Oil and the social cost of commuting
• Presidential Legacies
• Race and the Presidency
• Warren G. Harding

Phillip G. Payne is an associate professor of history at St. Bonaventure University in western New York, where he teaches courses in United States and public history. He worked for the Ohio Historical Society at the Warren G. Harding Home.

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Dead Last

The Public Memory of Warren G. Harding’s Scandalous Legacy

By Phillip G. Payne

If George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are the saints in America’s civil religion, then the twenty-ninth president, Warren G. Harding, is our sinner. Prior to the Nixon administration, the Harding scandals were the most infamous of the twentieth century.…

Available December 2008 (est.)

Phillip G. Payne is available for interviews on the following topics:

Presidential Legacies
Politicians, pundits, and scholars are all concerned with presidential legacies. Was a president great? Was a president a failure? How do we judge greatness, mediocrity, or failure? Do we consider his private life? His policies? Warren G. Harding is often considered the standard of presidential failure. With the current president about to leave office, Payne's insights will illuminate how we consider the Bush legacy.

Race and the Presidency
If elected, would Barack Obama become the first black president? Some would argue that that distinction belongs to Warren G. Harding. Depending on your sources, Warren G. Harding was a black man passing as white. White supremicists used this to denounce Harding; ethnologists discuss this when addressing the ambiguity of race; some African Americans consider with pride the idea that Harding may have been black.

Warren G. Harding
As the 29th president of the United States (from 1921—1923), Warren Harding’s administration is best known for scandals. While president, Harding famously complained that it was his friends, not his enemies, who kept him awake at night. Indeed, Teapot Dome and related scandals (with themes of oil money, cronyism, and sexual affairs) were the most infamous political outrages up to Watergate.

Thomas Zeller is an associate professor at the University of Maryland, where he teaches the history of technology, environmental history, and science and technology studies. He is the author of Driving Germany: The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930–1970 and coeditor of How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich and Rivers in History: Designing and Conceiving Waterways in Europe and North America.

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The World beyond the Windshield

Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe

Edited by Christof Mauch and Thomas Zeller

For better or worse, the view through a car's windshield has redefined how we see the world around us. In some cases, such as the American parkway, the view from the road was the be-all and end-all of the highway; in others, such as the Italian autostrada, the view of a fast, efficient transportation machine celebrating either Fascism or its absence was the goal.…

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How Green Were the Nazis?

Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich

Edited by Franz-Josef Bruggemeier, Mark Cioc and Thomas Zeller

The Nazis created nature preserves, championed sustainable forestry, curbed air pollution, and designed the autobahn highway network as a way of bringing Germans closer to nature. How Green Were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich is the first book to examine the Third Reich's environmental policies and to offer an in-depth exploration of the intersections between brown ideologies and green practices.…

Thomas Zeller is available for interviews on the following topics:

Oil and the social cost of commuting
With so many people living in suburbs and relying on roads for their commutes, are there alternatives? Can they work?