Frank Bruni was named restaurant critic for The New York Times in April 2004. Before that, Mr. Bruni had been the Rome bureau chief from July 2002 until March 2004, a post he took after working as a reporter in the Washington D.C. bureau from December 1998 until May 2002. While in Washington, he was among the journalists assigned to Capitol Hill and Congress until August 1999, when he was assigned full-time to cover the presidential campaign of Gov. George W. Bush. He then covered the White House for the first eight months of the Bush administration, and subsequently spent seven months as the Washington-based staff writer for The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Mr. Bruni is the author of The New York Times bestseller about George W. Bush called Ambling into History (HarperCollins: hardcover, 2002; paperback, 2003). He is also the co-author of A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church.