Joshua Specht

Joshua Specht is a historian of the United States. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2014. His first book, Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2019) explores how Americans rich and poor came to expect affordable high-quality fresh beef. His second book, Property Values: The Rise and Fall of the American Homeowner (Princeton University Press, 2026) ranges from homestead to suburb to put land ownership and housing at the center of the American story. In part, it explains why housing today is so expensive and why that housing is an ever-more pressing social, political, and economic challenge.

 

He is currently working on a project on political violence in the 1850s as well as a study of William Tecumseh Sherman. He offers courses in American History, Financial History, Historical Methods, and the History of Food. He is currently developing a course (and broader project) on the varied ways that creative disciplines--from the film industry to literature to gaming--engage with the past.