Adam Hochschild was born in New York City in 1942. After graduating from college, he worked as a newspaper reporter in San Francisco, and as an editor and writer at Ramparts magazine. In the mid-1970s, he was a cofounder of Mother Jones magazine and was an editor there until 1981. He is the author The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin, The Mirror at Midnight A South African Journey, and Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son. His articles and reviews have appeared in many publications, including Mother Jones, Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, and The Washington Post.