Meg Jacobs received her Ph.D. in 1998 from the University of Virginia. Her area of expertise is 20th century American political history. Her first book, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America was published with Princeton University Press and won the Organization of American Historians' 2006 prize for the best book on modern politics. She is currently working on a book on the energy crisis of the 1970s. She has recently published Conservatives in Power: The Reagan Years, 1981-1989, Bedford/St.Martin's (2010).
In 2008-2009, Professor Jacobs was a fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies.
Recent publications include "The Conservative Struggle and the Energy Crisis." In Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s, edited by Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer (Harvard University Press, 2008); Meg Jacobs and Julian E. Zelizer. "Comment: Swinging too Far to the Left." Journal of Contemporary History 43 (2008); "Consumers and Politics." In The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History, edited by Micahel Kazin (Princeton University Press, 2009); "Wreaking Havoc from Within: George W. Bush's Energy Policy in Historical Perspective." In The Presidency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment, edited by Julian E. Zelizer (Princeton University Press, 2010); "The Uncertain Future of American Politics, 1940 to 1973." In American History Now, edited by Eric Foner and Lisa McGirr (Temple University Press, 2011); "State of the Field: The Politics of Consumption." Reviews in American History 39 (2011); "The Politics of Environmental Regulation: Business-Government Relations in the 1970s and Beyond." In What's Good for Business: Business and American Politics since World War II, edited by Kim Phillips-Fein and Julian E. Zelizer (Oxford University Press, 2012).