Michael Pfeifer's research interests revolve around the history of collective violence and criminal justice in the United States. He is the author of Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874-1947 (University of Illinois Press, 2004), as well as articles on the history of lynching and criminal justice in Louisiana History, The Annals of Iowa, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, American Nineteenth-Century History, The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd Edition, and the Encyclopedia of Appalachia. Pfeifer is currently working on a manuscript tentatively titled The Roots of Rough Justice: the Origins of Lynching in the United States (under contract with the University of Illinois Press) which traces the early history of lynching and criminal justice in the United States. U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana cited Rough Justice and entered Pfeifer’s confirmed list of Louisiana lynchings into the Congressional Record on June 13, 2005, as she introduced Senate Resolution 39, which apologized to lynching victims and their descendants for the U.S. Senate’s historical failure to pass anti-lynching legislation. Pfeifer has also served as a book review editor for H-Law since October 2004.