James Traub
Encyclopedia
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...
, where he has worked since 1998. From 1994 to 1997, he was a staff writer for The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
. He has also written for The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
, The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...
, National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
and Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...
. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...
.
As a freelance journalist, he has written many book reviews and other articles for the New York Times. His recent writing focuses on politics and international affairs, including profiles of Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
, Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
and John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
. He also wrote a book on Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan
Kofi Atta Annan is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006...
and the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
.
New York City is the subject or background of several of his books. His 1990 book Too Good to Be True was about the rise and fall of Wedtech
Wedtech scandal
The Wedtech Scandal was the name of an American political scandal that came to light in the late 1980s involving the Wedtech Corporation.The company had been founded in Bronx County, New York by a Puerto Rican immigrant named John Mariotta, and originally manufactured baby carriages...
, a small Bronx manufacturing company that used no-bid contracts, fraud and corruption to win defense contracts during the Reagan administration. His 2004 book The Devil's Playground was about the history of Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
, including its decline as a center of adult businesses in the 1990s to its redevelopment under Mayor Rudy Giuliani
Rudy Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani KBE is an American lawyer, businessman, and politician from New York. He served as Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001....
, who was also the subject of several feature articles he wrote for the New York Times Magazine.
He has written extensively on education issues, including his 1994 book City On A Hill, a profile of City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
, written after he spent 18 months on campus. He wrote a study of school reform
Education reform
Education reform is the process of improving public education. Small improvements in education theoretically have large social returns, in health, wealth and well-being. Historically, reforms have taken different forms because the motivations of reformers have differed.A continuing motivation has...
called Better By Design for the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Thomas B. Fordham Institute
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is a based in Washington, D.C. and Dayton, Ohio. Its stated mission is "to close America's vexing achievement gaps by raising standards, strengthening accountability, and expanding education options for parents and families."...
that profiled ten approaches to school reform. He has also written articles about the No Child Left Behind Act
No Child Left Behind Act
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is a United States Act of Congress concerning the education of children in public schools.NCLB was originally proposed by the administration of George W. Bush immediately after he took office...
and school choice
School choice
School choice is a term used to describe a wide array of programs aimed at giving families the opportunity to choose the school their children will attend. As a matter of form, school choice does not give preference to one form of schooling or another, rather manifests itself whenever a student...
.
He is the son of Marvin Traub
Marvin Traub
Marvin Traub is a prominent business executive in the retail sector known for his impact on merchandising and marketing. Traub was CEO and President of Bloomingdale's for twenty-two years leaving in 1992 to found his own consulting firm, Marvin Traub Associates...
, formerly chairman of Bloomingdale's
Bloomingdale's
Bloomingdale's is an American department store owned by Macy's, Inc. .Bloomingdale's started in 1861 when brothers Joseph and Lyman G. Bloomingdale started selling hoop-skirts in their Ladies Notions' Shop on Manhattan's Lower East Side...
, and Lee L. Traub, chair emerita of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance
Martha Graham
Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.She danced and choreographed for over seventy years...
. He is married to Elizabeth Easton, formerly the chair of the Department of European Painting and Sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....
and an adjunct professor at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
. He is a magna cum laude
Latin honors
Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the level of academic distinction with which an academic degree was earned. This system is primarily used in the United States, Canada, and in many countries of continental Europe, though some institutions also use the English translation of these...
graduate of Harvard University. He taught at the Maulana Azad College
The Maulana Azad Education Trust Aurangabad
Dr.Rafiq Zakaria started the Maulana Azad Education Society at Aurangabad with Maulana Azad College of Arts and Science in 1963 which is affiliated to Dr...
in Aurangabad, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. He was also a reporter for the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
and a senior editor of the Saturday Review.
Books
- India: The Challenge of Change, Julian Messner, 1981 (revised 1985) — ISBN 978-0671428341
- The Billion-Dollar Connection: The International Drug Trade, Julian Messner, 1982 — ISBN 978-0671452476
- Too Good to Be True: The Outlandish Story of Wedtech, Doubleday, 1990 — ISBN 978-0385261821
- City On A Hill: Testing the American Dream at City College, Addison Wesley Publishing, 1994 — ISBN 978-0201622270
- The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square, Random House, 2004 — ISBN 978-0375507885
- The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006 — ISBN 978-0374182205
- The Freedom Agenda: Why America Must Spread Democracy (Just Not the Way George Bush Did), Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008 — ISBN 978-0374158477
External links
- Subject James Traub as the subject articles at The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
- Author James Traub as the author articles at The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...