Sam Tanenhaus

Sam Tanenhaus is a journalist, historian, and biographer.  The former editor (in chief) of the New York Times Book Review, he has been a contributing editor and writer at Vanity Fair and the U.S. Writer at Large for the British monthly Prospect, and is currently a contributing writer to the Washington Post. His feature articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker,  New York Review of Books, Atlantic, Time,  Wall Street Journal, and many other publications in the United States and abroad. He has also lectured at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, as well as at the White House and the Clinton, Kennedy, and Johnson Presidential libraries. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Toronto (at both St. Michael’s College and the Munk School) and was on the international advisory committee of the Weston International Award in 2020-2024. Tanenhaus’s books include the bestsellers Whittaker Chambers (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; shortlisted for both the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize) and The Death of Conservatism (one of The New Yorker’s “100 Favorite Books” of 2009). His new book, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution that Changed America, was published in June 2025

Updated July 2025