Education Next

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Peter Meyer

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Author Bio:
Peter Meyer is a former News Editor of Life magazine and the author of numerous nonfiction books, including the critically acclaimed The Yale Murder (Empire Books, 1982; Berkley Books, 1983), Death of Innocence (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1985; Berkley Books, 1986) and Dark Obsession (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1990; Berkley Books, 1990). He was an associate editor and writer for Peter Jennings (ABC News) and The America Project (In Search of America, Hyperion, 2002) as well as a writer for Time Warner’s The War in Iraq: The Illustrated History (Life Books, 2003). 



Over the course of his three-decade journalism career Meyer, who holds a masters degree in European Intellectual History from the University of Chicago, has touched down in cities around the globe, from Bennington to Baghdad, and has written hundreds of stories, on subjects as varied as anti-terrorist training for American ambassadors to the history of the 1040 income tax form. His interview subjects include the famous and the infamous, from Henry Kissinger to Muhammad Ali, Ollie North to Jesse Jackson, defrocked priests and juvenile psychopaths, even “the cutest baby in America.” His work has appeared in such national publications as Harper's, Vanity Fair, National Geographic, New York, Life, Time and People. His 1978 cover story for Harper’s, “Land Rush: A Survey of America’s Land, Who Owns It, Who Controls It, How Much Is Left,” won a prestigious Business Journalism Award from the University of Missouri. And in 1988 Meyer’s “Children of Poverty: Growing Up at 215 Washington Street, Portsmouth, Ohio” (Life Magazine) earned a Robert F. Kennedy Foundation Award for Excellence. 




Meyer joined the staff of Life magazine in 1986 and spent ten years at Time Inc., working as reporter, writer, and editor for Life, People, and Time magazines, before moving to his upstate New York home with his wife and young child. For most of the last fifteen years Meyer has focused his attentions on education reform in the United States, an interest joined in 1991 while writing a profile of education reformer E.D. Hirsch for Life. Meyer subsequently helped found a charter school, served on his local Board of Education (twice) and, for the last six years, has been an editor at Education Next, a journal published by the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.  His articles for the journal include “The Early Education of our Next President” (Fall 2008), “New York City’s Education Battles: The mayor, the schools, and the `rinky-dink candy store’” (Spring 2008), “Learning Separately: The case for single-sex schools” (Winter 2008), and “Can Catholic Schools Be Saved?” (Spring 2007).  Meyer also writes and edits, mostly on education, for the American Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute, and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

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