Charles Kaiser is an American journalist, author and educator. He holds the position of a weekend nonfiction book critic at the Guardian US since 2017. Kaiser is also a former reporter for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and a former press critic for Newsweek.
Background
Charles Kaiser was born on November 13, 1950, in Washington, D.C., United States. The son of a diplomat, Philip Mayer Kaiser, and his wife, Hannah (Greeley) Kaiser, Charles grew up in Washington, D.C., Albany, New York, Dakar, Senegal, London, England and Windsor, Connecticut.
Education
Kaiser received his education at Columbia University, attending it from 1968 to 1972.
Career
Kaiser started his career, writing for The New York Times while still an undergraduate at Columbia College. He spent five years there as a reporter on the Metro staff, covering City Hall, the environment, and State Supreme Court, among other beats. He then became the press critic at Newsweek for two years. After a brief stint writing about media and publishing for the Wall Street Journal, he wrote his first book, 1968 In America, which was published in 1988. The Gay Metropolis was first published in 1997. The Cost of Courage, about one French family in the Resistance in Paris during World War II, was published in 2015.
In 2017 Kaiser was named Associate Director at the LGBT Social Science and Public Policy Center at Hunter College, as well as a Grove Fellowship Program Leader. The same year he became a weekend nonfiction book critic at the Guardian US.
During his career, he has also taught journalism at Columbia and Princeton, where he was the Ferris Professor of Journalism.
Personality
Kaiser is an avid bike rider. A few years ago he biked 1,000 miles in three weeks over the Blue Ridge mountains in Virginia and Kentucky.