Skull and Bones: Interview with Ron Rosenbaum
Democracy Now

Ron Rosenbaum grew up on Long Island, New York. A graduate of Yale with a degree in English literature, he left Yale Graduate School to write full-time. His essays and journalism have appeared in Harper's, Esquire, The New Republic, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. He's done eight cover stories for The New York Times Magazine. He is the author of four previous books, including one novel and three collections of his essays and journalism, most recently Travels with Dr. Death and Other Unusual Investigations.

The Pulitzer Prize winning writer and historian Thomas Powers called him "one of the few distinctive voices of modern American literary journalism." His work has been characterized by the essayist Phillip Lopate as combining "the skills of a terrific investigative reporter and an accomplished literary stylist with an idiosyncratic streak all his own."

His latest bestseller, Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil, has won critical acclaim for it's candid analyses of how we explain Hitler through literature and film. He has studied those who have tried to make sense of Hitler, so that we may better understand our definitions of evil.

Currently Ron Rosenbaum writes for The New York Times Magazine, The New York Observer, and Esquire, and teaches a course on literary journalism at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.