BA, (MA) Russian Language & Literature, Oxford University
BA, College of Letters, Wesleyan University, 1985

I’ve worked as a professional journalist for nearly twenty years, having first started out as a stringer in Moscow during the final years of the USSR. Thanks to the great fortune of winning a Patterson fellowship in 1995, I spent a year reporting from the war zones of the former Soviet lands. I also reported from Afghanistan in 1996, before the takeover of the Taliban. For the next six years, from 1996 to 2001, I was based in Moscow, where I covered Russia and the ex-USSR as a staff correspondent for TIME. 

Since returning to the U.S., I have written two books of nonfiction. Black Earth is a history of Russia’s first post-Soviet decade, as told by way of a travelogue. The Lost Spy, due out in the summer of 2008, is part history, part detective story—a biography of a 1920s American Communist turned Soviet spy.  

In addition to teaching, I continue to write on U.S. and foreign affairs for national and international publications, including Harper’s, National Geographic, The New Republic, The New York Times, Orion, Outside, The Washington Post, and Wired.  In addition to appearing as a commentator on the BBC, CNN, and NPR, I have reported and written for PBS documentaries, mostly recently, a Bill Moyers Special on 9/11.

At Lang, my interest lies in creating a classroom not of pre-professional journalists, but critical readers and writers. The emphasis is not on acquiring skills, but learning craft—through writing, rewriting and more rewriting. Although I teach in the Writing program, I enjoy opening the classroom to as wide a spectrum of media as possible—including documentaries, music, and poetry. 
As a working journalist, teaching at Lang has been a boon to my writing life.  More than any single publication or editor, the undergraduates I’ve encountered have helped to restore my faith in the practice and purpose of journalism in America.

• Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall (WW Norton, 2004)
• Chechnya: To the Heart of A Conflict (WW Norton, 2005)
• The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin’s Secret Service (WW Norton, Summer 2008)

War Reporting; Russian, East European history, politics, and culture; Terrorism and Intelligence; Central Asian politics;
The War in Iraq

The Authors Guild