Todd S. Purdum is a journalist and author with more than forty years’ experience writing about politics, history, popular culture and national affairs. He was most recently a staff writer and California correspondent for The Atlantic. He regularly contributes to Air Mail News and other publications. He has also been senior writer at Politico and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, and spent 23 years with The New York Times, beginning as a copyboy. At The Times, he covered politics from city hall to the White House, and also served as diplomatic correspondent and Los Angeles bureau chief.

Purdum is the author of four books, including the latest, Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television, to be published by Simon & Schuster in June. He is also the author of Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution, and An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Purdum is a native of Macomb, Ill., and a graduate of Princeton University. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Dee Dee Myers, the former Clinton White House press secretary and now director of the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, and they have two grown children.

Photo credit – Jeffrey MacMillan