About Me

John J. Miller writes for National Review, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He is the author of The First Assassin, a historical thriller, plus several works of nonfiction. He is a contributing editor of Philanthropy magazine and a consultant to grantmaking foundations. The Chronicle of Higher Education has called him “one of the best literary journalists in the country.”

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How I became a writer
National Review Online biography
Listen to my NRO podcasts — author interviews, updated weekly
My NRO blogs appear sporadically on The Corner
Wikipedia entry (no, I didn’t write it)

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My early life is kind of like the line from that Journey song: “born and raised in south Detroit.” Except that I was born in east Detroit and raised on the west side. Near as I can tell, there’s no such thing as “south Detroit,” unless it’s Windsor, Ontario.

I went to high school in Florida because that’s where my dad’s job took the family for a few years. Then I headed back north, to the University of Michigan, apparently because my natural habitat involves eight months of winter. I majored in English, edited the Michigan Review, and became engaged to my girlfriend on the Diag. We were married a year later and now have three kids. The oldest is named after a former Detroit Red Wing.

Following graduation, I moved to Washington, D.C. and worked at The New Republic. Then I held a couple of think-tank jobs and wrote my first book, The Unmaking of Americans. In 1998, I joined the staff of National Review. As a journalist, I’ve interviewed the president in the Oval Office, visited NORAD headquarters in the heart of Cheyenne Mountain, and learned how to use a stone-age throwing weapon called an atlatl.

I wrote another book, Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America’s Disastrous Relationship with France, co-authored by Mark Molesky, an old friend from the Michigan Review. The experience made me a proficient teller of French jokes. In truth, I love the French: They’re always there when they need us. Also, I’m one-quarter French Canadian.

Next came A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America–a book of enormous interest to a small number of influential people. It led to my becoming a consultant with a pair of foundations, Searle Freedom Trust and the Arthur N. Rupe Foundation. As Saul Bellow reportedly once said, “Every writer needs something to do in the afternoon.”

Even before joining National Review, I was at work on my first novel, The First Assassin. For years, it was the project I kept putting aside as deadlines loomed and children were born. Yet hardly a day passed in which I didn’t give it at least a fleeting thought. The book is a historical thriller, set primarily in 1861 Washington. I published it on my own in 2009. As I had hoped, it caught the eye of an editor. AmazonEncore will release  a new edition in September 2010.

I recently finished writing The Big Scrum: Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of Football, which HarperCollins will put out in 2011.

I live with my family in Prince William County, Va.