What's there to say? I was born, I went to school, I wrote a book. For the last three years I've been the managing editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas ; before that I was an assistant editor at The New Republic , where I still contribute articles and blog items.

For the past six years I've also been a freelance writer, focusing on a range of topics, including architecture, the economy, European politics, and all things southern. You can read some of my more recent pieces here.

My work has appeared in outlets including Smithsonian , Inc ., The New York Times Magazine , The Atlantic , and The American Scholar . I am a contributing editor at The Morning News , World Trade , and The Architects Newspaper , and I write a semi-regular column for Architect .

I was born in the tiny town of Big Flats, N.Y. It is neither big nor flat, as it lies between two very steep hills; one of them, Harris Hill, is famous as the home of the National Soaring Museum. A little while later my family moved to Nashville, where I developed a guilty love for Moon Pies.

I learned the basics of journalism -- how to read and write -- at Big Flats Elementary. Later, in order to avoid his high school's athletics requirement, I edited the school yearbook. In college, in order to avoid having fun, I edited The Georgetown Hoya .

After graduating I lived in rural Austria for a year, teaching English at the Jennersdorf Bundesoberstuferealgymnasium. I saw a wedding between a man and a tree, hundreds of garden gnomes and the world's longest würst. Later I went to grad school in a vain attempt to avoid growing up. But this too had to pass. Studying is expensive.

What else? I have a medium-distant cousin, Arnie "Stilts" Risen, who was a hall-of-famer for the Boston Celtics. This, I think, is pretty cool, especially since I'm only 5'6".