Rick Shenkman is a writer, historian, producer, journalist and college lecturer; for several years he was the managing editor of KIRO TV News, the CBS affiliate in Seattle, Washington.  He was the co-founder of TomPaine.com, an Internet journal of opinion established in 1998. His books have been translated into Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Turkish and Korean.  Excerpts have appeared in college textbooks used in English classes across the country.  Three of his books have been selections of the Book of the Month Club and the Paperback Book Club.

 

Twenty years ago he founded the History News Network, now at George Washington University.   The website, which draws up to a million page views a month, features op eds by historians commenting on current events. 

 

Mr. Shenkman has appeared numerous times on national television shows

including the Today Show and Prime Time Live.  (Click here for his YouTube channel.) In the early 1990s he was a regular contributor to the Sunday Today Show.  He currently is

regularly seen on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC.

 

This interview on CNN about his Amazon bestseller, Just How Stupid Are We?, went viral, drawing more than 1 million views. You can see his interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show here.

 

In 1996-97 he hosted his own prime time 13-part television series on

The Learning Channel.  The show, "Myth America," featured interviews

with the country's top historians including Carl Degler, Henry Graff,

and James Thomas Flexner.  Mr. Shenkman wrote and produced the show,

which was inspired by three of his books, including the New York Times bestseller, Legends, Lies and Cherished Myths of American History (HarperCollins).

 

Educated at Vassar and Harvard, Mr. Shenkman has studied the American

presidents for three decades.  After college he spent a year working on

the Papers of Andrew Jackson. His book, Presidential Ambition (HarperCollins), landed him on Chris Matthews's show, Hardball, where he appeared regularly.

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His career as a journalist began more than thirty years ago in New York

City, where he hosted a show on cable TV putting current events into

historical perspective.  He later worked as a television reporter in

Lexington, Kentucky, Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, and Washington,

DC.  As an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter he exposed an

orphanage in Thailand exploited by a children's sex ring and uncovered

fraud and abuse at Utah's largest power company, leading to the rebate

of over 60 million dollars to state ratepayers.  He also exposed the

hidden past of a billionaire who wanted to be the governor of Utah. (The candidate subsequently withdrew from the race.)

 

Click here for his media appearances.