was born in Carmel, California in 1965, and educated at the University of California, Berkeley and Yale. He is currently the Ben Weider Professor of History at Florida State University, and has also taught at Columbia, Yale, and New York University. He is the author of Enemies of the Enlightenment (Oxford) and Happiness: A History (Atlantic Monthly Press), and his essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and other publications.