What has been pushing my professional life can be summed up in a single sentence: My father was a university professor who did not get tenure and a writer who never published a book. I didn’t quite grasp the significance of all this until I was a 16-year-old honors student about to finish high school [...]

When I was a child in New York, my life—and, it seemed, my entire family’s life—revolved around the Brooklyn Dodgers. I had memorized the starting batting order, including their batting averages, which were updated every day in the newspaper. Each starting pitcher’s record and other statistics were easily recalled. I cut out articles, photos, box [...]

Recently, while in my basement digging through old shopping bags full of philosophy books, I came across a flaky brown paperback titled Moral Philosophy: A Program of Study for Honors Students. Published for the Swarthmore College Philosophy Department in the 1940s, it was an 81-page outline for a 16-week seminar—replete with potential honors exam questions. [...]

When I found myself in Barack Obama’s campaign field office in South Philadelphia on Election Day—where I had worked for the past month—I couldn’t help feeling somewhat surprised to be there. For almost the entirety of my awareness of politics, I had been alienated from my government, estranged from my country, and unsure of my [...]

We first came to San Miguel de Allende six years ago, on a driving vacation through Mexico’s central highlands. My wife, Teresa Nicholas ’76, and I stopped for less than 24 hours on that first visit, but we were sufficiently taken with the picturesque setting, colonial architecture, and vibrant arts scene that we decided to [...]

It took a 100-day strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) to convince me that I was, indeed, a writer.
I don’t necessarily mean I’m a good one. Just that I am one. It’s what I do. It’s all I’ve ever really been trained to do.
I guess I should start in 2004, when my husband, [...]