Todd DePastino


Todd DePastino is an author and history professor.

Biography

Personal life

DePastino and his wife Stephanie live in Pittsburgh with their two children.

Education

in Pittsburgh;
BA in History and Philosophy from Boston College;
MA and Ph.D. in American History from Yale University.

Academic career

DePastino teaches at Penn State Beaver.

Writing career

With the birth of his first daughter in 1996, DePastino became a stay-at-home dad, teaching in the evenings at Penn State Beaver and Waynesburg College while finishing his Ph.D. He then revised his dissertation on the history of homelessness into a book, for which he won a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. The result was Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America.
After editing, annotating, and introducing the lost classic, The Road by Jack London, DePastino plunged into his Bill Mauldin research. Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front received strong reviews, was an Eisner Award finalist, and won the Sperber Prize for the best biography of a major media figure. His award-winning double-volume collection of Mauldin's World War II cartoons, Willie & Joe: The WWII Years was followed in 2011 by Willie & Joe: Back Home, which covers 1945-1946.
Commissioned in Battle: A Combat Infantryman in the Pacific, co-authored by Jay Gruenfled, was released by Hellgate Press in early 2012.

Other work

DePastino is the director of the Pittsburgh-based Veterans Breakfast Club.

Works