Richard Brookhiser has been writing about politicians, living and dead, for most of his life. His first article, on antiwar protests in his high school, was a cover story in National Review in 1970, when he was 15. He went to work for the magazine full time in 1977, and has been there ever since. In 1987, Rick began writing a column for The New York Observer, and he has written for many other magazines, from The Atlantic Monthly to Cosmopolitan, covering everything from the fall of Communism to Monica Lewinsky.

In 1996, he published his first biography, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington. Joseph J. Ellis, reviewing it for The New York Times Book Review, said it belonged “on the same shelf with Plutarch.” Four more books on the founders followed, and he wrote and hosted Rediscovering George Washington, a film by Michael Pack, which aired on PBS on July 4, 2002. Rick was historian curator of “Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America,” an exhibition at The New-York Historical Society (2004-5). In 2005 he was named a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by Washington College. He wrote What Would the Founders Do? Our Questions, Their Answers (Basic Books)—a perfect topic, considering how well they know each other.

Now he is the author of Right Time, Right Place, about which this blog is devoted.