He grew up in Washington, DC, where no one in his extended family ever worked for the government, and received a BA in History from Yale. After living in Boston for a little while and trying his hand as a sports photographer, Professor Goldman made the smart decision to move to California and work on a PhD from UC Berkeley in early modern European History, which he completed in 2009. His specialty is Spanish foreign policy in the reign of Philip III (r. 1598-1621, for those who don’t know their Spanish Habsburgs), specifically the role of new forms of political thought on political action in the Spanish Empire. His book, Rational Empire, is under consideration at Cambridge University Press.