I'm the author of three books published by Yale University Press, including one that won the American Library Association's Book of the Year award. I've also published about fifty articles, mostly about free speech, freedom of religion, and academic freedom.

I'm a Writer in Residence at the New York Public Library and an active member of PEN, the Authors Guild, and Mystery Writers of America.

When I retired in 2014 from my job as a professor of English and legal studies at the University of Delaware, I started working on the transition to commercial writing: memoir, personal essays, fiction. It's a competitive and sometimes daunting world of agents, editors, blogging, social networking, and setting up a website -- but when you don't have to depend on it for a living, all that is a lot more fun. I'm now shopping around my first post-retirement manuscript, and preliminary results are good. Stay tuned.