He received his B.A. from Stanford University and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University. Before coming to the University of Missouri, he was a Miller Center fellow at the University of Virginia and a Dickey Center fellow at Dartmouth College. He studies the history of oil and energy, along with related topics like the environment, political economy, and U.S. relations with the Middle East. His current book project looks at the United States and Saudi Arabia during the oil crisis of the 1970s.