About
McWhirter is the author of the Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America (Henry Holt), which Booklist called in a starred review, "A riveting account of the summer that transformed American race relations." He is co-author with Zusha Elinson of the forthcoming American Gun: The Story of the AR-15, the Rifle That Divided a Nation (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). He is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, covering politics, economics, breaking news and other subjects. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude from Hamilton College, where he majored in history. He earned an MS from Columbia Journalism School and has worked for several news organizations including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Detroit News. He has been awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for research in Eritrea and Sudan, a Nieman fellowship at Harvard University and a MacDowell residency for nonfiction in New Hampshire.
