Mike Allen Assembles the 'American Puzzle' - 2013 Distinguished Research Award

Mike Allen's favorite toy as a child was a jigsaw puzzle of the United States. Years later, as a professor in Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, he is still working with the "American puzzle," putting together stories of this part of the world.

Much of his work focuses on restoring to our awareness aspects of American history that have become obscured or that have been reinterpreted as political influences have shifted. His books and articles are about river boatmen and cowboys. Western Rivermen, 1763-1861, examines the lives of boatmen on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination looks at the evolution of an American spectator sport that emerged from the struggle between frontier and civilization.

With Larry Schweikart, Allen authored A Patriot's History of the United States, a bestseller often seen as a rebuttal of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

The awards committee that reviewed his work was impressed with his "unconventional and courageous work, his deep passion to tell the story of U.S. history in ways that sustain one's hope and faith in this country's potential." One of the reviewers appreciated how Mike's work provided a way of viewing the West as a state of mind, rather than a region.

He is a recipient of UW Tacoma's Distinguished Teaching Award (2005), and has been on the faculty since the founding of the campus.

Read an in-depth profile of Mike Allen, first published in the Winter 2009 issue of Terrain, the magazine of UW Tacoma.