He received a Ph.D. in history from Brandeis University in 1989, where he worked under the guidance of Donald Worster, David Hackett Fischer, and Morton Horwitz.
[4][5] Steinberg is the author of several books in U.S. history that focus on the relationship between ecological forces and social power.
Considered by some to be an ecosocialist or pro-socialist scholar,[6][7] Steinberg is highly critical of the impact that capitalism has had on the environment and society.
He has been the recipient of support from the Michigan Society of Fellows (1990–1993), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1996), the American Council of Learned Societies Burkhardt Fellowship (2001), the National Endowment for the Humanities (2010), and Yale University, where he was the B. Benjamin Zucker Fellow in 2006.
[18] He written for CounterPunch, Dissent, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Discover, Scientific American, Natural History, and The New York Times among others.