A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he is the author, coauthor, or editor of four books. His writing has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, American Heritage, the Times Literary Supplement, and Slate. He came to UNLV in 2006 from Washington, D.C., where he was literary editor of the Wilson Quarterly, a magazine of ideas. He has been a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Annenberg Washington Program in Communications Policy Studies, and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University.