Cindy Ott is an associate professor of history and museum studies at the University of Delaware.  She has worked as a researcher on food and culture projects for the Smithsonian Institution, an environmental historian for the National Park Service, and a curator, specializing in American Indian and white relations.  Working at a Maryland farm stand led to her first book Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon.  Helping out at a cattle ranch on the Crow reservation in Montana inspired her current project Biscuits and Buffalo: The Reinvention of American Indian Culture in the 20th & 21st Centuries. She is also an illustrator who has produced scientific drawings at archeological sites around the world and currently uses colored pencils to draw scenes from everyday life.