Thomas C. Cox, a third-generation Kansan, earned his B.A. from the University of Kansas in 1970 and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1974 and 1980. He is the author of Blacks in Topeka, Kansas, 1865-1915: A Social History (1982) and of articles and reviews in several fields of American history. He was on the faculty of Middlebury College from 1976 to 1982, and from 1982 to 2008 taught courses in American intellectual history, American environmental history, and African-American history at the University of Southern California, where he won University-wide honors for his teaching and his research.