Thomas B. Edsall

Edsall was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Richard Linn Edsall, a market research executive, and Katherine Byrne, a museum executive.[5] Edsall is the grandson of David Linn Edsall, who served as Dean of the Harvard Medical School from 1918 to 1935.[6][7] He is the nephew of John Tileston Edsall, a noted protein scientist and professor at Harvard University and Geoffrey Edsall, the former president of the American Association of Immunologists.[8][9]

He attended Brown University before receiving his B.A. from Boston University in 1966.

Edsall served as a VISTA volunteer from 1966 to 1967 and he wrote for The Providence Journal in 1965.[10] Edsall covered politics for The Baltimore Sun from 1967 to 1981; and he covered national politics for the Washington Post from 1981 to 2006. He was the political editor of the Huffington Post from 2007 to 2009,[11] a correspondent for The New Republic from 2006 to 2013 and for the National Journal from 2006 to 2007.[3]

In November and December 2006, Edsall was a guest columnist for the print edition of the New York Times Op-Ed page.[12][13]

From 2006 to 2014, Edsall served as the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Public Affairs Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism,[3] where he continues to teach in an adjunct capacity.[1]

From 2011 to the present he has been a weekly opinion columnist for the New York Times.[10][2]

He makes occasional TV and radio appearances on CNN, CSPAN, MSNBC, PBS, FOX, and NPR.[14]

Edsall is married and lives in New York and Washington, D.C., with his wife, Mary (daughter of Karl Deutsch),[5] with whom he co-authored the book Chain Reaction,[15] a 1992 Pulitzer Prize finalist in general nonfiction.[16]

The couple has one daughter, Alexandra, a graduate of Harvard Law School and former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.[17]

• Shapiro Fellowship, School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University (2015)[18]
• Markwell Award of the International Society of Political Psychology (2014)[19]
• Finalist, General Non-Fiction, Pulitzer Prize, 1992, for Chain Reaction: The Impact on American Politics of Race, Rights and Taxes (W.W. Norton)[20]
• Bill Pryor Memorial Award, Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, 1981[21]
• Carey McWilliams Award, American Political Science Association, 1994[22]
• Fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars 1996–1997[3]
• Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 1997, 2000, 2003–2006, 2010–2012[3]

External video
Booknotes interview with Edsall on Chain Reaction, December 15, 1991, C-SPAN
Washington Journal interview with Edsall on The Age of Austerity, January 27, 2012, C-SPAN

• Edsall, Thomas B. (1984). The New Politics of Inequality. W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-30250-4.
• —— (1988). Power and Money: Writing About Politics. W. W. Norton.
• ——; Edsall, Mary D. (August 1992). Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics. W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-30903-7.
• —— (August 28, 2006). Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive For Permanent Power. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-01815-7.
• —— (January 10, 2012). The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-53519-9.
• —— (April 11, 2023). The Point of No Return: American Democracy at the Crossroads. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-16489-2.

• New York Times columns
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• A War of All Against All; Are Democrats and Republicans now engaged in a 'death struggle' over dwindling resources, making gridlock and dysfunction more likely? by W. James Antle III January 10, 2012, a The Age of Austerity WSJ book review
• "What Became of the Democrats" by David Oshinsky
• "Race" by Thomas Byrne Edsall
• "The Wind that Blew in Reagan" by Murray Kempton
• The Political Price of Austerity by Mark Schmitt January 20, 2012 NYT book review
• Collected columns from The New Republic