Fred Kaplan, author of “Gore Vidal, A Biography” and “Lincoln, the Biography of a Writer.” He is the “War Stories” columnist for Slate and the author of “The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War,” “1959: The Year Everything Changed,” “Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power,” and The Wizards of Armageddon.”
Before Slate, Kaplan was a staff reporter for the Boston Globe, working as its Pentagon reporter (1983–91), Moscow bureau chief (1992–95), and New York bureau chief (1995–2002). In 1983, Dr. Kaplan was a lead member of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for a special Sunday magazine on the nuclear arms race. From 1978 to 1980, he was foreign and defense policy aide to Representative Les Aspin in the U.S. House of Representatives.
He holds a BA from Oberlin College and a PhD in political science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.