Background
Dreazen was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1976.
Dreazen was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1976.
In 1994, he graduated from the Ida Crown Jewish Academy, where he started a student newspaper. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999, with degrees in history and English.
As of 2014, he is the managing editor for news at Foreign Policy and the author of a new book, The Invisible Front: Love and Loss in an Era of Endless War, which details the story of one Army family"s fight against military suicide. He previously was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and National Journal. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs, including The Diane Rehm Show (National Public Radio) and Washington Week with Gwen Ifill (Public Broadcasting Service).
He spent a year in Israel before attending college.
As a student at the University of Pennsylvania, Dreazen edited the independent student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian. Dreazen"s first employer was The Wall Street Journal.
He arrived in Iraq in April 2003, less than a month after the start of the Iraq War, with the 4th Infantry Division. He lived in Baghdad for the next two and a half years, where he was The Wall Street Journal"s main Iraq correspondent.
In total, Dreazen spent more than five years in Iraq and Afghanistan during the 11 years he worked at The Wall Street Journal.
He has reported from more than three dozen countries, including China, Japan, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. In 2010, the Military Reporters & Editors Association recognized Dreazen"s work with its top award for domestic coverage. His work included articles about suicide among soldiers and the psychological traumas that affect veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His book, The Invisible Front, was the finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, jointly awarded by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Harvard"s Nieman Foundation for Journalism.
In the award citation, the judges cited the book"s "detailed compassionate and compelling report from the front lines of what Dreazen calls "the Army’s third war" – its fight against the plague of military suicides in the wake of our prolonged conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.".
