Nina Burleigh

Nina Burleigh is a a journalist, best-selling author, documentary producer, and publisher of a substack on politics called American Freakshow. A contributing editor at The New Republic and frequent contributor to the New York Times and New York Magazine, she has covered American politics and culture for three decades. Her journalism has been published widely including in translation in the Norwegian and Italian press. She's the author of eight books on an array of topics including archaeological forgery, scientists in 18th Century Egypt, James Smithson, Amanda Knox in Italy, and the Trump women, which were reviewed, excerpted or covered in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, New York Magazine, BBC, ABC, MSNBC, and other media outlets. She was born and educated in the Midwest, has been based in Washington, D.C., New York, Norway, Paris and Italy, traveled and reported extensively in the Middle East. An adjunct professor at NYU's Arthur J. Carter Journalism Institute, Google Scholar says her work has been cited in hundreds of scholarly articles.

Sub-specialties:

Trump and women. Simon & Schuster published The Trump Women: Part of the Deal, in 2018 and updated in 2019, and will be publishing a new version next year. I spent a year researching the women in the Trump family, and his business and social orbit, and came to some conclusions about the roots of his attitudes toward women, and why women vote for him.

American politics: I have covered elections and politicians for decades, in almost every state, starting in Springfield, the capital of Illinois, in Washington and from New York City.

The Middle East: My mother was an Iraqi Christian, I have deep cultural understanding of the region, spent childhood in and out of Baghdad, and as a journalist I have covered wars and reported on other matters in Iraq, Egypt, Israel, West Bank, Beirut and Morocco. I have published two books about the Middle East: Unholy Business - about the forged Biblical archaeology trade in Jerusalem; and Mirage - the fascinating saga of Napoleon's scientists in Egypt in 1800.