Faculty

Profile

A professional journalist for more than three decades, I first started out as a stringer in Moscow during the last years of the USSR.   Thanks to the great fortune of winning an Alicia Patterson fellowship, I spent a year reporting from the war zones of the former Soviet lands and Afghanistan.   I spent the next six years based in Moscow, covering Russia and the ex-USSR as a staff correspondent for TIME magazine.

I've written three award-winning books of nonfiction:

BLACK EARTH is a history of Russia’s first post-Soviet decade, as told by way of a travelogue. 

THE LOST SPY is part history, part detective story--a biography of Isaiah "Cy" Oggins, a 1920s American Communist turned Soviet spy. In 1947, after eight years in the Gulag, Oggins was "liquidated"--murdered in Moscow, by lethal injection, on Stalin's personal orders. 

MORGENTHAU, an epic spanning four generations, offers a panaromatic portrait of one family across more than 150 years of U.S. and world history, revealing their power and influence in the most consequential presidencies of the 20th century: the administrations of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. 

BLACK EARTH and THE LOST SPY were named to a number of Best-Books-of-the-Year lists, including those of The New York Public Library, NPR, The Washington Post,  The Los Angeles Times, and The Times Literary Supplement. 

MORGENTHAU: Privilege, Power, and the Rise of American Dynasty was published by Random House in 2023, and named a "Book of the Year" by The New Yorker magazine and a New York Times Book Review "Editors' Choice."  MORGENTHAU, as well as BLACK EARTH, were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

In addition to teaching, for many years I've been a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, where I write on U.S. and foreign affairs.   My work has also appeared in numerous national and international publications, including Harper’s, National Geographic, The New Republic,  The New York Times Book Review, Outside, Politico, The Washington Post, and WIRED.

A frequent commentator on the BBC, CNN, and NPR, I've also reported and written for PBS documentaries, including a Bill Moyers Special on 9/11.

At Lang, my interest lies in creating a classroom not of pre-professional journalists, but of critical readers and writers. The emphasis is not on acquiring skills, but learning craft—through writing, rewriting and more rewriting.   As a co-founder of our pioneering Journalism + Design program, I've enjoyed opening the classroom to as wide a spectrum of media as possible—from documentaries to photojournalism to music.

As a working journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker, teaching has been a boon to my work beyond the classroom.  More than any single publication or editor, the undergraduates I’ve encountered have helped to restore my faith in the practice and purpose of journalism in America.

Degrees Held

BA, (MA) Russian Language & Literature, Oxford University.
BA, College of Letters, Wesleyan University.

Professional Affiliation

• The Authors Guild
• Overseas Press Club
• The Paul Klebnikov Fellowship (Harriman Institute, Columbia University)
• The Leon Levy Center for Biograpphy (The Graduate Center, CUNY)
• BIO (Biographers International Organization)
• American Friends of University College, Oxford (AFUCO)

Recent Publications

• MORGENTHAU: Privilege, Power, and the Rise of an American Dynasty (Random House, 2022; PB, 2023)
• BLACK EARTH: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall (WW Norton, 2004)
• CHECHNYA: To the Heart of A Conflict (WW Norton, 2005)
• THE LOST SPY: An American in Stalin’s Secret Service (WW Norton, 2008)

Performances and Appearances

For speaking appearances and book events: www.AndrewMeier.com

Research Interests

• Jourmalism, Design Thinking, Visual Literacy
• Investigative Nonfiction
• Biography
• Documentary Film
• Open Source Investigation
• War Reporting; The Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Russian History, Politics, & Culture
• Politics of Central Asia and the Caucasus

Awards And Honors

Fellowships:

• Leon Levy Center for Biography (The Graduate Center, CUNY)
• Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation Fellow (Dorothy & Lewis B. Cullman Center for Writers & Scholars at the New York Public Library)
• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow
• Visiting Fellow (Kluge Center, The Library of Congress)
• Visiting Fellow (Hoover Institution, Stanford University)
• Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
• Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow