Garrett M. Graff, a distinguished magazine journalist, internationally bestselling historian, and regular TV commentator and producer, has spent nearly two decades covering politics, technology, and national security and is recognized today as one of the nation’s most prolific and wide-ranging journalists and historians.
His award-winning work—including a half-dozen books on topics ranging from presidential campaigns, Watergate, 9/11, cybersecurity, and the U.S. government’s Cold War Doomsday plans, as well as dozens of magazine articles, essays, podcasts, and documentaries—uses history to explain the story of today, illuminating where we’ve been as a country and where we’re headed as a world.
A Pulitzer Prize Finalist, he has written for publications from WIRED to Esquire to the New York Times, and served as the editor of two of Washington’s most prestigious magazines, Washingtonian (2009-2014) and POLITICO Magazine (2014-2015), which he helped lead to its first National Magazine Award, the industry’s highest honor.
Graff is the author of multiple books, including The Threat Matrix: Inside Robert Mueller’s FBI and the national bestseller, Raven Rock, about the government’s Cold War Doomsday plans, as well as co-author of Dawn of the Code War, tracing the global cybersecurity threat.
His most recent book, Watergate: A New History, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History, called “dazzling” by Douglas Brinkley in the New York Times Book Review and “standard-setting” by Kirkus Reviews, and became an instant New York Times bestseller. In a review for the Washington Post, Len Downie, Jr., wrote, “Do we need still another Watergate book? The answer turns out to be yes — this one.”
Graff’s previous book, a #1 national bestseller, The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11, compiling the voices of 500 Americans as they experienced that tragic day, was called a “a priceless civic gift” by the Wall Street Journal, as well as “an exceptional document [and] brilliant work of immediate history” by Le Monde. It was also named the industry’s 2020 Audiobook of the Year, saying, “Graff has created a historical document with the deftness of a poet.”
A regular voice and analyst on NPR, PBS NewsHour, the History Channel, and other outlets, he is also the host of “Long Shadow,” a #1 Apple History podcast series, whose multiple seasons have examined the lingering questions of 9/11 and the rise of the American far-right. He served as executive producer of “While the Rest of Us Die,” a two-season VICE TV series based on his book Raven Rock, among other multimedia, TV, and film projects.
He is the founding director of the Aspen Institute’s cybersecurity and technology program, where he helped start the prestigious Aspen Cybersecurity Group, and has a long history as a new media pioneer. He was the founding editor of mediaBistro.com’s FishbowlDC, a popular blog that covered the media and journalism in Washington, and co-founder of EchoDitto, Inc., an internet strategy consulting firm at the dawn of the social media age. During his time at FishbowlDC, he was the first blogger admitted to cover a White House press briefing in 2005. A Vermont native and graduate of Harvard, he served as deputy press secretary on Howard Dean’s presidential campaign and, beginning in 1997, was then-Governor Dean’s first webmaster.
He taught at Georgetown University for seven years, including courses on journalism and technology, has served on the boards of the Burlington Housing Authority, Vermont Public Radio, and the National Conference on Citizenship, and received a doctorate of humane letters, honoris causa, from Champlain College.
Over the years, his writing and commentary has appeared in publications like the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, New York, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, 5280, Politico, AARP Magazine, Columbia Journalism Review, New York Daily News, The Week, Eater, Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine, USA Today, GQ UK, NextCity, and he has appeared on Face the Nation, CBS This Morning, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBC, the BBC, Al Jazeera English, the History Channel, National Geographic, and various NPR programs, including “This American Life,” “Fresh Air,” and “All Things Considered.”
