Charles Euchner, who teaches writing at Yale University, is the author of acclaimed books on American history, politics, and society.
Previously he has been the special projects editor at New America, a research fellow at the Center for an Urban Future, and the founding director of Harvard University’s Rappaport Institute. He has written widely about American politics and history.
For his whole career as a writer and scholar, Euchner has focused on grassroots politics. His works on urban politics (Playing the Field and Urban Policy Reconsidered) explore, in part, the role of activists in local politics. His book Extraordinary Politics assays the role of political and social movements in the U.S. His work for think tanks—like New America and the Center for an Urban Future—likewise explore the importance of activism on policymaking. As a planner for the City of Boston, Euchner worked closely with activists on the development of a citywide planning vision.
Nobody Turn Me Around, Euchner’s work on the civil rights movement, won wide acclaim for a revisionist narrative of the 1963 March on Washington. John Egerton, author of the classic Speak Now Against the Day, said:
The pages crackle and vibrate with the voices of unsung heroes who drove, flew, rode buses and trains, hitchhiked, even walked long distances to be there in the Great Emancipator’s stone shadow as Dr. King spun out his immortal “Dream.”
Jack Shakely, senior fellow, Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy, University of Southern California, added:
As Charles Euchner’s riveting account makes clear, the American public, and most of the participants themselves, had only the barest grasp of the days, weeks and months of meticulous planning, the sacrifices, the triumphs and the internecine squabbles that went into the March on Washington that hot afternoon of August 28, 1963. … All the key figures of the civil rights movement of the 1960s are here in Nobody Turn Me Around. To Euchner’s great credit, they are presented as flesh and blood, not as cardboard cutouts for some Black History Month display.
Beyond grassroots politics and activism, Euchner has developed a reputation for explaining complex topics with engaging narrative. Previous books have also won acclaim for Euchner’s storytelling and analysis. Of Euchner’s The Last Nine Innings, a Gladwellesque treatment of the “triple revolution” in major league baseball, Frank Deford said:
The Last Nine Innings is the last word on the inside game of baseball. It’s full of wonderful revelations and perceptions that help us understand the game in ways that we might never have imagined. Charlie Euchner has done a marvelous job in getting players to talk, simply, about how they play, and we’re the wiser for it.
Of Playing the Field, Euchner’s analysis of the politics of sports, stadiums, and cities, Elliot Cohen said:
This landmark work should anger taxpayers and inspire them to stand up to the millionaires pulling the strings behind teams and governments, entities citizens still naively consider their own.
Euchner has spoken widely on a number of issues, including civil rights, protest politics, city planning and policy, writing, and baseball. He has appeared on Nightline, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, The NBC Nightly News, The Diane Rehm Show, and many other TV and radio programs, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, People, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and other major publications.