Recent Writing

Variations of Uncertain Significance
Liberties
March 2026

How Scary Was the Red Scare?
Cambridge Day / Lingua Franca
March 13, 2026

In Search of a Trauma Plot
Cambridge Day / Lingua Franca
February 6, 2026

Are you a white supremacist? Are you sure?
Boston Globe
February 26, 2025

Christmas on Red Hill, or The Birth of Misotheism
Liberties
January 2025

David Graeber’s Magic Words
Compact Magazine
May 24, 2024

In the Counterlife of Autism
Liberties
January 2024

Autism’s Cult of Redemption
Skeptic
December 2023

The biggest Vietnam War story that Americans don’t talk about
Boston Globe
August 11, 2023

What my autistic son’s cold cheeseburgers taught me about bureaucracy
Boston Globe
May 26, 2023

Anti-Memoirs of Autism
The Point
November 30, 2022

The Mismeasure of Misha
Boston Globe
November 27, 2022

The Shocking School
Boston Review
December 22, 2021

The Group Home Racket: How a Financial Model Masquerades as a Human Service
Dollars & Sense
November/December 2021

Greetings from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I’m a historian currently writing a biography of the American sociologist C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) for Scribner.

This spring, the University of Chicago Press is publishing my edition of Dwight Macdonald’s essays: Atrocities of the Mind: Essays on Violence and Politics in the American Century.

I work as senior editor of Cambridge Day, a local newspaper, and editor of Lingua Franca, a magazine in development. I also write occasional essays about neurodevelopmental disabilities. In 2022-2023, I was a research fellow in history and disability at New America.

From 2012 to 2016 I was editor-in-chief of The Baffler magazine. Prior to that job, I taught at Harvard University, Columbia University, and Boston College. My PhD, in intellectual history, comes from the University of Rochester.