Rate My Professor Thomas Heinrich

Thomas Heinrich is Professor of History at Baruch College, City University of New York, where he serves as Chair of the Department of History in the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences. Born and raised in Germany, he received his PhD in U.S. business and labor history from the University of Pennsylvania and his BA from the University of Bielefeld. Heinrich has taught at Baruch College since 1998, rising from Assistant Professor to full Professor. He specializes in business and naval history, focusing on industrial mobilization, shipbuilding, and American economic development.

His key publications include Warship Builders: An Industrial History of U.S. Naval Shipbuilding, 1922-1945 (Naval Institute Press, 2020), which received the 2020 John Lyman Book Award in U.S. Maritime History; Ships for the Seven Seas: Philadelphia Shipbuilding in the Age of Industrial Capitalism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); Kotex, Kleenex, Huggies: Kimberly-Clark and the Consumer Revolution in American Business, co-authored with Bob Batchelor (Ohio State University Press, 2004); and a chapter in A Concise American History, co-authored with David Brown, Simon Middleton, and Vivien Miller (Routledge, 2012). Additional works encompass articles such as 'Cold War Armory: Military Contracting in Silicon Valley' (Enterprise & Society, 2002) and 'Industrial Mobilization in American Naval Shipbuilding, 1940-1945' (International Journal of Maritime History). Heinrich has secured research grants from PSC-CUNY and serves on the Scholarly Advisory Board of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He has presented public lectures, including 'Workshop of American Shipbuilding during World War II,' and co-organized teach-ins on historical topics. His scholarship provides detailed analyses of U.S. naval shipbuilding and business innovation, contributing to understandings of industrial history during wartime and consumer eras.