James M. Brophy is the Francis H. Squire Professor of History at the University of Delaware. He received his BA from Vassar College, trained at Eberhard Karls Universität in Tübingen, Germany, and took his PhD in modern European history at Indiana University. He is the author of Popular Culture and the Public Sphere in the Rhineland, 1800-1850 (2007), Capitalism, Railroads, and Politics in Prussia, 1830-1870 (1998), and over three dozen essays in journals and books. He is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Academy in Berlin. He is the former president of the Central European History Society and currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Modern History as well as on the academic advisory council of the Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe.