Michael Lesy is an Emeritus Professor of Literary Journalism at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He received a B.A. in theoretical sociology from Columbia University, an M.A. in American social history from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. in American cultural history from Rutgers University. He has published more than a dozen books of history, biography, and narrative nonfiction. Many of his books have been based on historic photographs, gathered in archives; several have been based on oral histories, gathered during fieldwork. Mr. Lesy has contributed essays to The Jewish Museum’s The Radical Camera, Harvard University Press’ A New Literary History of America, and the Free Press’ Killing the Buddha. His reviews, columns, and critical essays about the use of archival photographs as historical documents have appeared in Aperture and DoubleTake magazines, and in The Journal of American History. Mr. Lesy’s first book, Wisconsin Death Trip, has remained in print since 1973. Mr. Lesy’s books have been made into operas, plays, dance performances, and films. They have served as inspiration for novels, short stories, and albums of popular music. In 2013, Mr. Lesy was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. During his Guggenheim Fellowship term, Mr. Lesy conducted research for Looking Backward, a book and companion exhibitions based on the 500,000 stereographic images in the Keystone-Mast Collection at the California Museum of Photography, University of California-Riverside.