The Author
Author of the financial and tech thriller, Bandwidth, and co-author of the children's book Backpacks & Baguettes. I’m a former journalist, speechwriter and senior policy advisor at the U.S. State Department. I’ve spent half my career in Europe and half in the U.S.
In college, I flipped hamburgers and fixed fences in Wyoming. After graduation, I moved to Brussels where he lived in a nun's cell in a former convent that had been converted into communal living quarters. The Berlin Wall fell while I was there. I hitchhiked to Budapest in cars, motorcycles and fruit trucks. The first thing I saw upon arrival in Hungary were Cold War statues being torn down as the communist star was being wrenched off the parliament by a crane.
I like good coffee, a well-made martini and toast. I think cities should provide advice kiosks manned by out of work philosophy graduates.
About
JUST RELEASED. My son, Sam, and I wrote Backpacks & Baguettes. It’s a children’s travel book that combines narrative with graffiti and street art from around the world, because that’s better than any postcard to truly understand a place, right?
The book is a reminder of what it was like to be in the world before the pandemic hit - the sound of mopeds in Vietnam, the smell of chicken turning on a spit at a French market, a water fight in Bangkok, mushroom hunting in the hills of Tuscany, the feel of fog on your face in San Francisco bay–human contact.
Sam's stories are ultimately about asking questions until you're exhausted. They're about not caring what people think. They're about smiling and laughing until it hurts and playing until you scrape your knees. They're about letting your imagination run wild. They're about realizing in one breath that children are different, but ultimately the same all around the world. They're about being a kid once.
Buy the book/Spread the Word
Backpacks & Baguettes is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and Target. If you like the book, please do a review on Amazon. Sam and I are available for interviews, podcasts, blogs and book readings.