Michael Lesy was born and raised in Ohio and attended Columbia University. He holds graduate degrees in American history from the University of Wisconsin and Rutgers University. While at Rutgers, Lesy studied with the cultural historian Warren Susman; at Wisconsin, he was a student of the foreign policy expert William Appleman Williams, as well as the iconographer Paul Vanderbilt. While teaching at Yale University, Lesy was befriended and influenced by photographer Walker Evans. Lesy is now a professor of literary journalism at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He is the author of the highly acclaimed Wisconsin Death Trip, Long Time Coming, and Angel’s World (the latter two from Norton), and eight other books on photography, American history, and American culture.