Michelle Craig McDonald

Historian, Author, Educator

About the Author

Michelle Craig McDonald is the Director of the Library & Museum at the American Philosophical Society. She has worked for nearly three decades as an educator and administrator in university settings as well as museums and historic sites.

Her research focuses on trade and consumer behavior in North America and the Caribbean during the 18th and 19th centuries—especially the history of coffee.

Featured Publications

My most recent book is Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the early United States. Coffee is among the most common goods traded and consumed worldwide, and so omnipresent its popularity is often taken for granted. But even everyday habits have a history. When and why coffee become part of North American daily life is at the center of Coffee Nation. This book follows coffee from the slavery-based plantations of the Caribbean and South America, through the balance sheets of Atlantic world merchants, into the coffeehouses, stores, and homes of colonial North Americans, and ultimately to the growing import/export businesses of the early nineteenth-century United States that rebranded this exotic good as an American staple. The result is a sweeping history that explores how coffee shaped the lives of enslaved laborers and farmers, merchants and retailers, consumers and advertisers. Click here for an advanced purchase discount.

Additional books and book chapters appear in the publication links below.

Praise for Coffee Nation.

  • "Michelle Craig McDonald tells the much neglected story of the early history of coffee before the rise of the great producers in Central and South America. Coffee Nation extends Atlantic history beyond the American Revolutionary War. It is a major contribution to the history of commodities and to the economic history of the United States."

    Dr. Andrew Jackson
    O’Shaughnessy

    Author of The Men Who Lost
    America: British Leadership, the
    American Revolution, and the
    Fate of the Empire

  • "In an accessible, often witty narrative, Michelle Craig McDonald deftly traces the history of the production, distribution, and consumption of this popular, profitable commodity that Americans decided early on they could not live without—even if they had to depend on other nations to get it. Coffee Nation will be a must read in commodities history."

    Dr. Zara Anishanslin

    Author of Portrait of a Woman
    in Silk: Hidden Histories of the
    British Atlantic World

  • "Based on a remarkable grasp of archival and printed materials, and written with engaging verve, Coffee Nation explains how coffee became an inescapable feature of North American private and social life by the years of the early Republic. But it also provides a fuller understanding of the emergence of North American identity...an invaluable addition to our understanding of the rise of global commodities and an example of cultural history at its very best."

    Dr. James Walvin

    Author of A World Transformed:
    Slavery in the Americas and the
    Origins of Global Power

Upcoming Events

April 4, 2025: “The State of Material Culture in Early American History,” Organization of American Historians Conference, Chicago, IL. Click here for more details.

April 30, 2025: “Brewing a Revolution: Coffee in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia,” Kislak Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Click here for more details.

June 5, 2025: “Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States,” book talk, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA. Click here for more details.

June 9, 2025: “Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States,” book talk, Athenaeum, Philadelphia, PA.

Past Events

February 8, 2025: “Dependence,” PEAES@25 Conference, Library Company of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA. Click here for more details.

April 24 2024: “Coffee: The Other Complicated Colonial Beverage,” American Philosophical Society Spring Meeting, Philadelphia, PA. Click here for the video.

Education

Harvard-Newcomen Postdoctoral Fellow in Business History, Harvard Business School, 2005-06

Ph.D., History, University of Michigan, 2004

M.A., Liberal Arts, St. John’s College, Annapolis, 1997

M.A., Museum Studies, The George Washington University, 1994

B.A. in History, University of California, Los Angeles, 1990

Prior Positions

2024-present: Director of the Library & Museum, American Philosophical Society

2015-2023: Office of the Provost, Stockton University

2006-2023: Professor of Atlantic History, Stockton University (tenured in 2011; promoted to Full Professor in 2023)

1996-1998: Education Director, American Psychological Association Traveling Exhibition Division

1993-1996: Director of Education, Decatur House, National Trust for Historic Preservation

Public History Work

I am deeply committed to public history and have previously worked at Colonial Williamsburg, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, as well as on exhibition and education projects for the American Psychological Association, the University of Michigan, the New Jersey Historical Commission, and the African American Heritage Museum of Southern New Jersey.

I have also appeared in television and documentary segments about the nineteenth-century industrial site Batsto Village, produced by “Drive by History,” and about North American reactions to the Haitian Revolution for Bearhouse Productions, as well as on the “Drive by History” podcast.

Look below for some of my favorite projects!

Public History Projects

Click on the icons below to learn more about each project.

The last project, MudGirls Studios based in Atlantic City, is my passion project—visit their website to learn more about the work of women helping women recover through the transformative power of art.

Contact

Interested in learning more or booking a speaking event? Please contact me at:

mcdonald@amphilsoc.org or (215) 440-3400

You can also contact Clint Kimberling, Director of Marketing at the University of Pennsylvania Press, at clintk@upenn.edu.