July 1, 2009 Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date:  July 1, 2009
Contact: Garry Adelman
E-mail: gadelman@historyassociates.com
Telephone: (301) 279-9697

Essay by Vice President Michael C. Reis Published in The Environmental Legacy of Harry S. Truman

History Associates vice president Michael C. Reis recently authored an essay appearing in The Environmental Legacy of Harry S. Truman, published by Truman State University Press. The book, edited by Karl Boyd Brooks, examines the Truman administration and its impact on the natural environment and the preservation movement. 

Based on papers presented at the 2007 Truman Legacy Symposium at Key West, Florida, The Environmental Legacy of Harry S. Truman includes articles by leading environmental, political, and legal scholars including Mark W. T. Harvey, Paul Milazzo, and Christine Todd Whitman. Mr. Reis’s essay, “Pre-EPA Environmental Records at the National Archives,” offers reflections on doing professional environmental history research, arguing that a wide variety of environmental records were created by federal agencies long before the EPA was established. Mr. Reis documents how these materials can help determine the facts at issue in current environmental disputes. He cites the extensive Truman era investigative reports on pre-EPA toxic disasters such as the Donora “killer smog” and the 1947 Texas City explosion.  
  
Mr. Reis holds a bachelor's degree in history from Loyola College and a master's degree in history from The George Washington University. He is the author or coauthor of several articles on environmental history.

About History Associates: For more than twenty-five years the historians and archivists at History Associates have demonstrated that history is valuable in the market as well as the marketplace of ideas. Our more than forty employees provide professional historical research, book-length histories, exhibit content, interpretive planning, and archives and records management to clients throughout the United States and around the world. History Associates serves corporate, government, and nonprofit clients from its headquarters in Rockville, Maryland, with an office in Brea, California. History Associates strives to be The Best Company in History®. For more information, call (301) 279-9697 or visit www.historyassociates.com.