John R. Short

I was born in central Scotland, just outside Stirling and spent all my pre-college years in the small village of Tullibody. My grandmother was a big influence on me and she stressed the importance of learning and social justice. Throughout my writing life I have tried to make the complex simple and the convoluted clear. I think I write for her.

I received my MA at Aberdeen University and my PhD at the University of Bristol. I have taught at the University of Reading and Syracuse University. I am emeritus professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. I have held visiting appointments as Senior Research Fellow at the Australian National University, as the Erasmus Professor at Groningen University and as the Leverhulme Professor at Loughborough University. My research awards include a Fulbright Fellowship to Southeast Asia, the Vietor Fellowship at Yale University, the Dibner Fellowship at the Smithsonian, the Kono Fellowship at the Huntington Library and the Andrew Mellon Fellowship at the American Philosophical Society.

I have published over 60 books, and numerous articles in academic journals on current affairs, geopolitics, urban issues and the history of cartography. My essays have appeared in Associated Press, Business Insider, La Repubblica, Market Watch, Newsweek, Salon, Slate, Time, US News and World Report, Washington Post and World Economic Forum. My work has been translated in Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Turkish and Vietnamese.

I love the inspirational process of writing, coming up with the initial ideas, sketching out chapter titles and outlining the basic narrative flow. Turning ideas into sentences and a manuscript into a book is more perspirational for me. As I am working on one book I always have three more in the back of my mind.