Biography

Graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1986 with a B.A. in English. He was a Morehead Scholar and on the staff of the student paper, The Daily Tar Heel. Graduated second in his class with a M.S. degree in journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. At Columbia, he also won a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship.

Chief restaurant critic of The New York Times from 2004 to 2009.

Release of his book, "A Gospel of Shame: Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church" by Frank with Elinor Burkett.

Release of his book, "Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-time Eater".

Release of his book, "Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush".

'Religious liberty' sounds disturbingly like a dog whistle to the crowd that wants specified, codified exemption from anti-discrimination laws. It's one of the phrases they lean on. As these lamentations about religious liberty get tossed around, it's worth remembering that racists have used the same argument to perpetuate segregation.

[observation, 2015] Determined to get into one of the dozen or so most selective institutions of higher learning in America? I'm sorry to break the news, but your odds have never been worse, unless you're the winner of a national science contest, a Bolshoi-ready dancer, a surfing legend, a stoic political refugee from a country we really loathe, an heroic political scion from a country we really love, or Malia or Sasha Obama - and, of course, you have perfect scores on every standardized test since the second grade - your visions of getting into, say, Stanford would more correctly be termed hallucinations.

If you can't put anybody on a moral plane, you can't put yourself on Air Force One.