The author and web master of Wist is Mark A. Eifler, who teaches American History at a small private university in the Pacific Northwest.  Dr. Eifler grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and received his Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1992.  He has taught in California, Nebraska, Oregon, and Salzburg, Austria.

He is the author of Gold Rush Capitalists, 2003, University of New Mexico Press.  He is currently working on several professional projects, including a new book on the California gold rush, transcribing a series of unpublished letters by Civil War surgeon William Peck, and a new international look at the North American Frontier.

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