I’m a writer and historian.
I go by Sandy. I’m interested in ideas: how they rise and fall, how they get around, and how they inform the cultural and political struggles of the recent past. I have written about cities and urbanism, internationalist thinking and politics, the relations between self and society, and problems of race and empire. Along the way, I’ve also explored music and subculture, bike messengering, and working on the early web.
I grew up in Washington DC, where I went to public schools. Since then I’ve lived in Evanston, Illinois, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington DC, New Haven, New York City, and Long Beach, California.
Now I’m in Providence, Rhode Island, where I am Professor of American Studies and Urban Studies at Brown University. I also serve as Vice President of the Board of DownCity Design, a community-based urban design studio in Providence.
My most recent book is The Idealist: Wendell Willkie’s Wartime Quest to Build One World (Belknap, 2020). I’ve also written Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York (Oxford, 2010) and I co-edited Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs (Random House, 2016) with Nate Storring. Over the years I’ve written reviews and essays for magazines, journals and newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, n+1, Public Books, The Baffler, Metropolis, Cabinet, In These Times, and—a long time ago, Hotwired. In other ancient history, I created and edited a zine called Vigil. I earned my PhD in American Studies from Yale University.