• PhD, Princeton University, 1971

American History writing in the mid-twentieth century; developmental disability

Current Research
Current Book Project: with Bruce Dierenfield, Enabling Rights: A Social History of Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District (to be published by the University of Illinois Press)

• National History Advisory Committee, Statue of Liberty Museum Project, Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island Foundation;
• Board of Trustees, Association for a Buffalo Presidential Center
• Board of Directors, Museum of disAbility History, Amherst, New York
• Board of Advisers, Buffalo Jewish Archives Project.
• Editorial Board, Journal Of American Ethnic History
• Organization Of American Historians; American Historical Association; Immigration And Ethnic History Society; Society for Disability Studies.

• “Disabled Veterans and the Wounds of War,” forthcoming, Oxford University Press Handbook for Disability History (2016) , Michael Rembis, et al., editors;
• “Moving Backward ad Moving On: Nostalgia, Significant Others, and Social Reintegration in Nineteenth Century British Immigrant Personal Correspondence,” forthcoming, Journal of the History of the Family (2016)
• “Measuring Student Engagement: Teaching about the Use of the Atomic Bomb,”  under review; and (4) “Still Sick: Health Consciousness among Nineteenth Century European Immigrants to North America,” in draft.

• American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2011)
• Authors Of Their Own Lives: Personal Correspondence In The Lives Of Nineteenth Century British Immigrants To The United States (New York University Press, 2006)
• The Making Of An American Pluralism: Buffalo, New York, 1825-1860 (University Of Illinois Press, 1989)
• Black Ohio And The Color Line (University Of Illinois Press, 1976)

• with Alan Kraut, Ethnic Historians and the Mainstream: Shaping America’s Immigration Story (2013)
• Disabled Veterans In History (University Of Michigan Press, 2000; revised and expanded, 2012)
• with Bruce Elliott and Suzanne Sinke, editor, Letters Across Borders: The Personal Correspondence of International Immigrants (Palgrave, 2006)
• with Alan Kraut, editor, American Immigration and Ethnicity: A Reader (Palgrave, 2005)

• Annual Senior Scholar Award,  Society for Disabiity Studies (2015)
• University at Buffalo Distinguished Professor (2007)
• Rita Lloyd Moroney Prize for the best book on the history of the United States Postal Service (2008)
• Carleton Qualey Annual Essay Prize (2000)
• Owen Augspurger Award For Contributions To Local History (1997)
• SUNY Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award (1991)
• Herbert Gutman Prize for the best book in American Social History published by the University of Illinois Press (1990)