He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1999 and is the Chair of the History of American Civilization and Professor of English and African American Studies at Harvard University. He has written and lectured widely on slavery and abolition, social protest, the dilemmas of self-making, and photography.
Books in order of publication:
| Quality Assurance Of Food: Ingredients, Processing, And Distribution | 1998 |
| Robert Stivers: Listening to Cement | 2000 |
| The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race | 2002 |
| Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln | 2008 |
| Records of the Proceedings | 2009 |
| The State of Jones | 2009 |
| The Tribunal: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid | 2012 |
| The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song That Marches on | 2013 |
| Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave | 2014 |
| Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American | 2015 |
| James McCullogh’s Book: A Glimpse into Life on the Colonial Frontier | 2015 |