Rich Benjamin is a sought-after public intellectual, who is often interviewed in the national and international media, including on NPR, BBC, MSNow, PBS, CNN, and HBO.

He is the author of Talk to Me: Lessons from a Family Forged by History (Pantheon, 2025).  The book has been received “not only as a portrait of Benjamin’s family, but as a bold, pugnacious portrait of America.” Talk to Me was the finalist, among 473 competitors, for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize.  It was also named a “Best Book of 2025” by Kirkus Reviews.

Benjamin’s first book, Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America, chronicles his two-year, 27,000-mile journey to the whitest, fastest-growing communities in America. Searching for Whitopia earned an Editors’ Choice award from the American Library Association. Now in its second printing, this groundbreaking study is one of the first to illuminate in advance the rise of white anxiety, white nationalism, and Trumpism in contemporary US life.

Benjamin’s essays appear regularly in public debate, including in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.

Most recently, Benjamin was the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University, an endowed fellow at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. His research has received support from the Bellagio Center, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Russell Sage Foundation.

He has earned residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, and Civitella.