News

The Department mourns the loss of Hal Rothman (PhD 1985), who passed away on February 25, 2007, at his home in Henderson, Nevada, after a fourteen-month struggle against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease). He was forty- eight years old and a distinguished professor of history at the University of Nevada— Las Vegas.

In recognition of his remarkable scholarly career on Nevada and the American West, Hal was awarded the Harry Reid Silver State Research Award in 2004 and was also inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. Possessed with an indefatigable degree of energy (and able to bicycle twenty miles and lift weights all before 8:00 AM each day), Hal wrote or edited more than a dozen books, including, Devil's Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth Century American West (1998), and Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-first Century (2002). As ALS gradually paralyzed his entire body, Hal wrote his last book, Blazing Heritage: A History of Wildland Fire in the National Parks, with the help of his beloved family and a dedicated team of graduate students, who sat with him for hours, transcribing his spoken words onto a computer. The book was published posthumously in April with Oxford University Press. Hal is survived by his wife, Lauralee, and their children, Talia and Brent.