Primarily an Early American historian, I also have subsidiary interests in the African-American experience, the early Caribbean, and the study of the Atlantic world.
Prizes include: Association of Caribbean Historians Best Article Prize (1995–1997); American Historical Association, Albert J. Beveridge Award and Wesley-Logan Prize (1998); Organization of American Historians, Elliott Rudwick Prize (1999); South Carolina Historical Society Prize (1999); Columbia University, Bancroft Prize (1999); Library of Virginia Literary Nonfiction Award (1999); Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Yale University, Frederick Douglass Prize (1999); Southern Historical Association, Frank L. and Harriet C. Owsley Prize (1999); American Philosophical Society, Jacques Barzun Prize (1999); Documenting Georgia’s History Award, Georgia Archives, (2010), and Malcolm Bell, Jr., and Muriel Barrow Bell Award, Georgia Historical Society (2011).