Richard White (historian)
Richard White is an American historian, a past President of the Organization of American Historians, and the author of influential books on the American West, Native American history, railroads, and environmental history. He is the Margaret Byrne Professor of American History at Stanford University, having previously taught at the University of Washington, University of Utah, and Michigan State University.
White is a member and former director of the Spatial History Project at Stanford, which implements digital technologies and analyses to illuminate patterns and anomalies for research purposes. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington.
He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2016.Works
- Land Use, Environment, and Social Change: The Shaping of Island County, Washington. University of Washington Press, 1979. ; .
- The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change Among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos. University of Nebraska Press, 1983. ; .
- The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. Cambridge University Press, 1991. ; .
- "It's Your Misfortune and None of my Own": A History of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991..
- The Frontier in American Culture: An Exhibition at the Newberry Library, August 26, 1994-January 7, 1995, with Patricia Nelson Limerick, edited by James Grossman. University of California, 1994. ; .
- The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. New York: Hill and Wang, 1996..
- Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998..
- "Corporations, Corruption, and the Modern Lobby: A Gilded Age Story of the West and the South in Washington, D.C.", Southern Spaces, 16 April 2009.
- Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. .
- The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896.
- California Exposures: Envisioning Myth and History, with photographs by Jesse Amble White. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2020. .
Awards and honors
- for best book on American history, 1992
- Albert J. Beveridge Award for best English-language book on American history, 1992
- for best book on U.S.-Canadian history, 1992
- for book on history of race relations in the United States, 1992
- The Middle Ground, 1992, and Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, 2011
- for "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own", 1992
- MacArthur Foundation fellowship, 1995
- Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, 2011
