He holds a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in history and policy, and is the author of Bike Battles: A History of Sharing the American Road (2015). His first book, Citizen Environmentalists (2010), described the rise of local environmental organizing in Pittsburgh and the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. He is a local bicycle advocate and a road cyclist, bike commuter, amateur mechanic, social rider, and lapsed recreational triathlete.