About
I'm a New York Times-bestselling author of four books of nonfiction: The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team (Ballantine Books, 2019); Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World (Ballantine Books, 2013); The Sun and the Moon: Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York (Basic Books, 2008); and Jewish Food: The World at Table (HarperCollins, 2005). I'm currently at work on a new book, tentatively entitled The Paris Line: A True Story of War, Friendship, and Two Heroic Women in Occupied France, under contract with Ballantine Books.
My books have received the New York City Book Award and have been finalists for the National Jewish Book Award and the GoodReads Choice Award; they have been Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers, Indie Next “Great Reads,” and Borders Original Voices selections, and have been translated into eight languages. My writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The American Scholar, the Harvard Review, Salon, Tablet, the Forward, Bon Appetit, and many other publications.
I've given book talks at venues including the Museum of the City of New York, the Gotham Center for New York History, the Center for Jewish History, the National Yiddish Book Center, the Brooklyn Book Festival, the 92nd Street Y, the Newseum in Washington, D.C., Authors at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, and many bookstores, universities, and libraries. My media appearances include National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, The Diane Rehm Show, On the Media, Only a Game, Back Story, and The Splendid Table; HuffPost Live; the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Woman’s Hour; the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s As It Happens; and numerous others.
Featured Work
Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World
On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly, the crusading young female reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s World newspaper, left New York City by steamship on a quest to break the record for the fastest trip around the world. Also departing from New York that day—and heading in the opposite direction by train—was a young journalist from The Cosmopolitan magazine, Elizabeth Bisland. Each woman was determined to outdo Jules Verne’s fictional hero Phileas Fogg and circle the globe in less than eighty days. The dramatic race that ensued would span twenty-eight thousand miles, captivate the nation, and change both competitors’ lives forever.
This book brings these trailblazing women to life as they race against time and each other, unaided and alone, ever aware that the slightest delay could mean the difference between victory and defeat. A vivid real-life re-creation of the race and its aftermath, from its frenzied start to the nail-biting dash at its finish, Eighty Days is history with the heart of a great adventure novel.
