About Me

I'm a writer, former journalist, and political junkie. I've worked on political campaigns — including Barack Obama's — and in government, and am still politically active locally. I've been published in the New York Times and other publications. These days I'm technically retired, but I'm not very good at it.

For the past eight years, I've been researching and writing "Start the Presses," a narrative nonfiction book about the 1893 Chicago mayoral succession crisis that followed the assassination of Carter Harrison Sr. The man at the center of that crisis — George B. Swift, who became Mayor Pro Tem overnight — was my great-great-grandfather. I set out to write a family story, but the deeper I dug into the archives, the more I realized this was really a story about newspapers and democracy - and one that felt strangely relevant: how Chicago's fiercely partisan press shaped a political crisis in ways no one intended, and accidentally did something democratic in the process.

I write about Gilded Age Chicago politics and journalism on my Substack, Politics and the Press in Gilded Age Chicago, where I have a growing community of readers who are as fascinated by this world as I am. I also write a second Substack called “The Action and Hope Bulletin” focused on political actions people can take, and signs that we’re making progress in this challenging time.

When I'm not buried in nineteenth-century microfilm, I'm in Connecticut with three dogs, and a 16-year-old cat named Kitten who rules us all. I’ll either be reading, writing, hosting a weekly happy hour, in my garden, or planning my next trip somewhere I've never been.