Erik Loomis

Erik Loomis is Professor of History at the University of Rhode Island. He’s the author of Organizing America: Stories of Americans Who Fought for Justice and A History of America in Ten Strikes.

Smoke streams out of coal power plant in Kentucky.

The Rise, Reign, and Fall of American Coal The Rise, Reign, and Fall of American Coal

What drives Trump’s politics is nostalgia for the age of coal, when dirty fuel and no environmental regulations created his version of a great America.

Oct 21, 2025 / Erik Loomis

Contestants log roll the Paul Bunyan Lumber Jack Show from Nova Scotia at the Marshfield Fair on August 23, 2019, in Marshfield, Massachusetts.

Nostalgia for the American Logger? Nostalgia for the American Logger?

Reflections on Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack.

May 13, 2025 / Erik Loomis

Harvard University

Trumpism Poses the Most Dire Threat to Academic Freedom in Recent Memory Trumpism Poses the Most Dire Threat to Academic Freedom in Recent Memory

A shadowy new Professor Watchlist has revived the McCarthyite hysteria of the 1950s. We must fight back.

Dec 13, 2016 / Erik Loomis

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