Tilling Agricultural History with Paul Wallace Gates and James C. Malin

Paul Wallace Gates was the leading American historian of the public domain during the latter half of the twentieth century and James C. Malin’s ecological approach to the history and environment of the North American grasslands brought important new perspectives to those subjects. As a graduate student, Allan G. Bogue studied with both and here he describes and contrasts their personalities, teaching styles, and interests, as well as the graduate student mores and methods of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Although the processes of graduate student research have changed greatly since then, he believes that the careers of Gates and Malin still carry meaning in the present.