Jane Mayer is a staff writer with The New Yorker, where she focuses on national security and intelligence issues. She received a B.A. from Vassar College in 1982 and a M.A. in international affairs from Georgetown University in 1985
Her 2008 National Book Award–winning book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, was chosen by NPR's David Greene as one of "The Year's Best Books," and the Wall Street Journal called it "a landmark book." She wrote the 2014 New York Times bestseller, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, which was named one of NPR's best books of 2013 and "a cultural touchstone of this decade." Mayer's most recent New York Times bestsellers include: Gringo: A Journey into the Heart of America; The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals; and Cover Story: My Secret Life Inside the CIA, Watergate's Final Days and the Hunt for Nixon's Pardon.
Libertarianism is supposed to be all about principles, but what it's really about is political expedience. It's basically a corporate front, masked as philosophy.Jane Mayer
[David] Maraniss sees [Barack] Obama as a man with "a moviegoer's or writer's sensibility, where he is both participating and observing himself participating, and views much of the political process as ridiculous or surreal, even as he is deep into it.Jane Mayer
