Brian Frehner is Chair and Professor of history at the University of Missouri-Kansas City where he teaches and researches the topics of oil, environment, technology and the American West. He is currently at work on a monograph examining the transition from coal to oil in the first half of the twentieth century. Recently, he drew upon his interest in environmental history to publish an article on the history of BMX bicycle racing, suburbanization, and open space in the 1970s. He is the author of Finding Oil: The Nature of Petroleum Geology, 1859-1920 (2011) and co-editor of two volumes: Indians and Energy: Exploitation and Opportunity in the American Southwest (2010) and The Greater Plains: Rethinking a Region’s Environmental Histories (2021). He is an affiliated faculty member with UMKC's Center for Digital and Public Humanities.
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