Robert S. McElvaine is Elizabeth Chisholm Professor of Arts and Letters and Chair of the Department of History at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, where he has taught for more than thirty years. He is the author of seven books and the editor of three: Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the "Forgotten Man" (North Carolina, 1983, 25th anniversary edition, 2008); The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941 (Times Books, 1984, 1993; 25th anniversary edition: Three Rivers, forthcoming, 2009)); The End of the Conservative Era: Liberalism After Reagan (Arbor House, 1987); Mario Cuomo: A Biography (Scribners, 1988); What's Left?: A New Democratic Vision for America (Adams, 1996); The Great Depression: A History in Documents, (Oxford University Press, 2000); Eve’s Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History (McGraw-Hill, 2001, paper, 2002), Franklin Delano Roosevelt (CQ Press, 2002), editor-in-chief of the two-volume Encyclopedia of the Great Depression (Macmillan Reference, 2004) and Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America (Crown, 2008). His essay, “One Depression, Two Remedies,” serves as the introduction to the chapter on the 1930s in Life: Our Century in Pictures (Little-Brown, 1999). His two early books on the Depression era have become standards in the field, acclaimed by historians and general readers alike. Two of his books have been named among the “Notable Books of the Year” by the New York Times Book Review, and three have been listed as Editor’s Choice “Bear in Mind” books in that publication.

McElvaine's articles and opinion pieces appear frequently in such publications as the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Boston Globe, and Newsweek. More than 100 of his articles have been published, some 60 of them in major national publications. He has been a guest on approximately 60 television and radio programs, including NBC's Today, ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, NBC Nightly News, National Public Radio's All Things Considered and Morning Edition, and BBC television and radio.

Professor McElvaine has served as historical consultant for several television programs, including the seven-episode PBS series The Great Depression. He has received many awards for his teaching, including a silver medal in the national Professor of the Year program of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and being named Millsaps College’s Distinguished Professor in 2001. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching named him the State Professor of the Year for Mississippi in 2002. He was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in New Zealand in 2007.

McElvaine spent more than a decade developing a new expertise in several fields, including anthropology, human evolution, ancient history, and women's history, in order to put himself in a position to offer a reinterpretation of the significance of sex in the unfolding of human history. He has lectured to enthusiastic audiences around the United States and in Russia, Austria, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, South Africa, and Papua New Guinea on his ideas about the central influence on human history of various misconceptions and metaphors about sex that form the basis of Eve’s Seed. The book has received glowing comments from both general readers and academics, including a starred review in Publishers’ Weekly. Joyce Appleby’s review in the Los Angeles Times Book Review begins: "Eve's Seed is a bestseller waiting to be discovered: a package of sex, science and species' vanity nicely wrapped in sparkling prose.” His ideas were also featured in an article in the Arts & Ideas section of the New York Times. The Los Angeles Times Book Review named Eve’s Seed one of the “Best Books of 2001.” A Chinese edition of the book was published in 2004.

McElvaine’s latest book, Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America, a passionate rejoinder to the purveyors of what he calls “ChristianityLite,” is being published by Crown in March 2008. He is currently completing a book on America in the 1960s, Oh Freedom!, which is under contract with Norton, and a novel.