Steven Stoll is the author of Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia, published by Hill & Wang/Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Widely hailed for its fresh, provocative account of Appalachia and why it matters, it was praised by Beth Macy, writing in The Wall Street Journal as “stunning . . . everything the real hillbillies wanted [J.D]. Vance to acknowledge is laid out majestically.”
His other books include The Great Delusion: A Mad Inventor, Death in the Tropics, and the Utopian Origins of Economic Growth, Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America and The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California.
Steven is Professor of History at Fordham University, where he teaches environmental history and writes about agrarian society in North America. He is a contributor to Harper’s Magazine, writing on subjects as diverse as Haiti, economic growth, and the Little Ice Age.