Dr. Vaught received his Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Davis in 1997 and joined the department that same year. He is the author of Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875-1920 (1999); After The Gold Rush: Tarnished Dreams in the Sacramento Valley (2007); and The Farmers’ Game: Baseball in Rural America (2013)–all published by Johns Hopkins University Press; and Teaching the Big Class: Advice from a History Colleague (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011). His most recent book is Spitter: Baseball’s Notorious Gaylord Perry (Texas A&M University Press, 2022). His articles have appeared in Agricultural History, Journal of Southern History, Pacific Historical Review, and Western Historical Quarterly, and his research has been funded by three grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is Past President of the Agricultural History Society, serves currently as an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer, and is writing a biography of Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller.