Who

I am a Washington, D.C.-based writer and editor. By day I am the managing editor at Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, where I oversee content and production. Democracy is a quarterly journal that focuses on progressive foreign and domestic policy, seasoned with healthy dashes of history and cultural criticism. Founded in 2006, Democracy was named the Best New Publication at the 2008 Independent Press Awards and was a finalist for Best Political Coverage earlier this year (beaten, incidentally, by my former employer, The New Republic).

When I'm not editing Democracy, I write freelance journalism on a variety of topics, including architecture, business and finance, southern literature, European politics and culture, and American history. I've been at it for a while, but recently I've written for The New York Observer, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Smithsonian. I am also a contributing editor at The Morning News, a contributing writer to The Architect's Newspaper, and a columnist for Architect; I am also a contributor to The Faster Times.

Much to my liver's dismay, I also blog about all things liquor-ish at the Atlantic's food site.  

Links to all my articles can be found here; recent pieces are to the right. And you can download my resume here.

In January 2009 I published my first book, A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination. A narrative history of the week following the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., A Nation on Fire explains the central role that urban violence played in the breakdown of the liberal state and the rise of the New Right. 

I think it's a pretty good book. But don't take my word for it; Publishers' Weekly called A Nation on Fire "a crucial addition to civil rights history, sure to absorb anyone interested in the times, the movement or MLK Jr.," while the Boston Globe said it was "a compelling narrative of the catastrophic events that flowed from the murder of Dr. King."

Where

Or, I guess, where from. I was born in upstate New York, in the dwindling days of the Ford Administration. But after a few years my family moved to Nashville, which is the place I call home. Why? Robert's Western World. Goo Goo Clusters. Cheap golf.

At 18 I left to seek fame and fortune in the wide-open world. Now, after settling into a career in a shrinking profession and having weathered two recessions in less than a decade of work, I'm wondering why I left. The golf is much more expensive here.

I went to college in Washington and graduate school in Chicago; in between I taught English at the Bundesoberstuferealgymnasium in Jennersdorf, Austria (Go Fighting Edelweiss! Go Fight Win!). In Austria I saw a man get married to a tree. I also saw the world's longest wurst.

School, I soon learned, is expensive, and so I left Chicago and followed my then-girlfriend to New York City. Which, believe it or not, is also expensive. But I did get to bum around Manhattan for a year, which I'll never regret.

Eventually I was hired as an assistant editor at The New Republic, which brought me back to Washington and into journalism. A few years later I had the fortune of meeting the lovely and talented Joanna Osborne, and a few years after that I had the good sense to marry her.