Before writing American Socialist, I was an editor at Jacobin for ten years.

Born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa by two union public-school educators, I’m the proud product of the state’s public schools, having attended them from kindergarten through college (go Hawks!). Before becoming a full-time editor and writer, I worked variously as a grocery store stocker, a UPS Store clerk, and a porter at a luxury condo building. Basketball was my first love; I follow the Minnesota Timberwolves religiously.

I have lived all over the country as an adult, but mostly in the Midwest (Minneapolis and Chicago). I now live in New York City, with my wonderful wife.

I came to write about Eugene Debs because I wanted to tell the oft-forgotten, oft-suppressed story of American socialism. And what better way to bring that rich history to life than a biography of the movement’s most iconic figure during its golden age? Plus, Debs was a Midwestern-bred Christian socialist, which felt very familiar to me (my parents were progressive Catholics).

I worked on American Socialism for six years. There were many weeks of research rabbit holes and many months of rewriting. When I was working on the book, I switched exclusively to reading novels in an attempt to make the prose really sing. The final product is the first mass-market biography of Eugene Debs and, I hope, a wonderfully vivid story not only of Debs, but the countless ordinary people he inspired to fight for their freedom.