
Michelle Follette Turk is is a historian of occupational health and the state of Nevada. She is the author of Gambling with Lives: A History of Occupational Health in Greater Las Vegas, as well as scholarly articles and lectures on occupational health history, Hoover Dam labor history, and Las Vegas medical history. Turk earned her doctorate in the history of the twentieth century-American West with specialties in public history, and is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas that teaches in the Department of History and Honors College. She is the Associate Editor of the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, serves on the Board of Directors of Preserve Nevada, and is the primary historian and consultant on curriculum development for the VR Hoover Dam prototype. Turk is the granddaughter of Kirk V. Cammack Jr., MD, the second board-certified surgeon in Nevada and cofounder of the Lion’s Burn Care Center at University Medical Center (UMC) in Las Vegas.