JAMES C. GIESEN is a historian specializing in the environmental and agricultural history of the United States South. His book Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South was awarded the Deep South Book Prize and the Francis B. Simkins Award, and his articles have won awards from the Agricultural History Society and the Southern Historical Association. Giesen has been named a Gulmon Eminent Scholar by the College of Arts and Sciences at Mississippi State University as well as a John Grisham Master Teacher, the university's highest teaching honor. He is also a fellow and former president of the Agricultural History Society.