Welcome. I am an investigator, a critic, a scholar, a public speaker.

Even as my work covers a spectrum of topics, it lasers in on a critical theme: power. At its core, my work offers a bracing investigation of political, social, and economic power.

Case in point: My current book, Talk to Me: Lessons from a Family Forged by History (Pantheon Books, Penguin-Random House), looks at the power of unforeseen events to shape individuals, families, two countries.

My work combines rigorous research with storytelling, allowing me to engage a broad audience. And so, my writing appears in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and elsewhere. And I’m often interviewed in international and national media, including on NPR, MSNBC, and CNN.

My first book, Searching for Whitopia, chronicles my 27,000-mile, two-year immersion into the fastest-growing, whitest communities in America. This groundbreaking anthropological study is one of the first to have illuminated in advance the rise of Trumpism, white anxiety, and white nationalism in current US life.

My research, writing, public speaking, and teaching all work hand in glove. Recently, I was the Walter Jackson Bate Fellow in Nonfiction Literature at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University (2023-2024). And I taught at Princeton University, as the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies (2023).

I am grateful for the support that my work has received at important moments over the years, from places including the Bellagio Center, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities program at NYPL, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the New-York Historical Society.

Thank you for stopping by.