Steven Press received his B.A. from Vanderbilt University and his A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He taught at Harvard and Vanderbilt before coming to Stanford. His research interests include sovereignty and commodity networks. Press's first book, Rogue Empires: Contracts and Conmen in Europe's Scramble for Africa (Harvard University Press, 2017) won the American Historical Association Pacific Coast Branch Book Award. Press's second book, The Jewels of Empire: Germany, Africa, and the Rise of the Diamond (Harvard University Press, 2021) won the German Studies Association’s Barclay Book Prize in 2022.