I am an observer, a documentarian, and a cultural translator. I translate dense, specialized information to general audiences, and I translate innovative ideas across different social backgrounds and fields. And so, my work appears regularly in public debate, including in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Times Sunday Book Review, NPR, MSNBC, and CNN.
Also, I enjoy venturing deeply researched accounts of events, phenomena, places, and people at the crux of significant change. My next book is a family memoir that doubles as a portrait of a shifting America. It will be published by Pantheon Books, Penguin | Random House
My first book, Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America, won an Editor’s Choice Award from The American Library Association. Now in its second printing, this groundbreaking study is one of few to have illuminated in advance the rise of white anxiety and white nationalism in contemporary US life. My work looking closely at changing worlds has been granted research | fellowship support from the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, New York Public Library (2021); Civitella (2022); the Robert Silvers Foundation (2020); the Russell Sage Foundation (2019); Columbia University Law School; and the Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation (2014).
In 2023, I will teach at Princeton University, as the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies.
My community involvement is to serve a few Boards of Trustees: Art Omi, the renowned arts center; New_Publics, the pro-democracy technology venture; and the Authors Guild, the national union of writers that has been protecting authors’ rights and free speech since 1912.