Dr. John R. Wennersten is a senior fellow at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution, and a member of the board of directors for the Anacostia Watershed Society. He is a professor emeritus of environmental history at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore, and he served as the associate editor for Maryland Historical Magazine for ten years. He was selected as a humanities scholar for Maryland and received the Maryland Writers Prize for his work The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay. He is the author of ten books.