Jake Halpern

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Jake Halpern (born 1975) is an American writer, commentator, and radio producer.

He was born in Buffalo, New York, where he attended City Honors School. Halpern later attended Yale University, where he received an undergraduate degree in 1997. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, the New Republic, Entertainment Weekly, Slate, New York Magazine and other publications.

Halpern is also a commentator and a freelance producer for National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

His first book, Braving Home (ISBN 0-618-44662-1), considered the lives of Americans who actively chose to live in or near dangerous places like volcanoes. The book was a main selection for the Book of the Month Club by Bill Bryson and was a Library Journal “Book of the Year.” His second book, Fame Junkies (ISBN 0-618-45369-5), considers the psychological underpinnings of celebrity obsession.

He currently teaches a course on journalism at Yale University. His first novel, Dormia, will be released in the spring of 2009.

He is married to Kasia Lipska.

[edit] Works

Braving Home: Dispatches from the Underwater Town, the Lava-Side Inn, and Other Extreme Locales, nonfiction (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003)
Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths behind America's Favorite Addiction, nonfiction (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007)