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Scott Reynolds Nelson

American historian

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 31, 2026
Entity authorityQ7437134
Source-derived summary

Scott Reynolds Nelson is the Georgia Athletic Association Professor of History at the University of Georgia. He was formerly the Legum Professor of History at the College of William and Mary. He is a historian of the Long Nineteenth Century. He specializes in Labor history, international finance, the history of science, and global commodities.

Awards received

for Steel Drivin' Man

2006 National Award for Arts Writing

2007 Merle Curti Award

2007 Anisfield-Wolf Award

2007 Virginia Literary Award for Nonfiction

for Ain't Nothing But a Man

2008 Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year

2009 Aesop Prize (Folklore Society of America)

2009 Jane Addams Prize, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

2009 Notable Children's Book in the Language Arts, National Center for Teachers of English

2009 American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults

Works

Iron Confederacies: Southern Railways, Klan Violence, and Reconstruction. UNC Press. 1999. ISBN 978-0-8078-4803-6. Scott Reynolds Nelson.

Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Scott Reynolds Nelson” as american historian. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2006, 2007, 2008, 2009—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1964-01-01. The account is most persuasive where Scott, Reynolds and Nelson can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american historian. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7437134. VIAF identifies the subject as 321688. The Library of Congress control number is no96027055. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Scott Reynolds Nelson”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Scott Reynolds Nelson primary sources, Scott Reynolds Nelson archive and Scott research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Scott Reynolds Nelson”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Scott Reynolds Nelson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.