Martin Gottlieb

Martin Gottlieb (a journalist not to be confused with one of the same name in the New York City area) grew up in mid-century in a Midwestern, middle-class apolitical family. In search of his own political views, he consumed a preposterous amount of political argument in an era that pitted William F. Buckley Jr. against – it seemed – all the other intellectuals. By his early 30s, Gottlieb was saying that he was well read in only two realms: contemporary political argument and the history of baseball as written for adolescent boys. The political interest led to a career as a writer of political argument, for the Dayton (Oh.) Daily News editorial page from 1984 to 2011. It also led to his two books, one patiently explaining to the political experts that they didn’t know beans about politics, and one focused on political argument in the North during the Civil War in the context of a historic Daytonian. At this writing in 2021, Gottlieb is retired near Dayton, is utterly disgusted by the political world and is writing – or planning, or thinking about, or thinking about planning – a book that grows out of his early non-political interest.