Clay Risen

Clay Risen is the deputy op-ed editor at The New York Times and the author of several works of American history, including "The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act," which was named a 2014 notable book of the year by The Washington Post, and "A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination." He oversaw two award-winning history series for The New York Times, Vietnam '67 and Disunion, and he was a co-editor of "The New York Times' Disunion: Modern Historians Revisit and Reconsider the Civil War from Lincoln's Election to the Emancipation Proclamation." Risen is also one of America's leading whiskey experts; he the author of "Single Malt: A Guide to the Whiskies of Scotland" and "American Whiskey, Bourbon and Rye: A Guide to the Nation's Favorite Spirit," which has sold over 100,000 copies across two editions. He has written extensively about whiskey and the liquor industry for The New York Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Fortune, Garden & Gun and other national publications. Risen previously worked as an assistant editor at The New Republic and the managing editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children.