I work in Massachusetts and am active in local environmental groups. I grew up in Spokane, Washington and moved to Amherst, MA to go to graduate school. PS: My family summers every year on Cape Cod and I can't imagine a better place to read than on the beach. I wrote my new book, The Roots of Defeat: The Clintons, Obama, and the Decline of the Democrats, when I became frustrated with all of the cautious, even conservative policies of President Obama. During the Financial Crisis in 2009, he bailed out the banks and let millions of homeowners get tossed into the street, he passed a small stimulus law and allowed unemployment to go way over 10%, and he pushed for free trade deals that cost U.S. jobs. To figure out why Democrats and the Democratic Party kept disappointing me, I did a lot of research about the last 40 years. The Roots of Defeat reveals everything I found. For my first book, Perils of Empire, I first came to love the Roman Republic through Colleen McCullough's great series of books about the era of Julius Caesar. The idea of writing my book came to me after President Bush invaded Iraq. Lots of people were talking about an American Empire. I wanted to show people that the Roman Republic has many fascinating and distressing parallels with our history.