Prof. Michael Meyer was sent to China as one of its first Peace Corps volunteers. Beginning with "The Last Days of Old Beijing," he authored three critically-acclaimed reported books set there, as well as numerous stories that appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Time, Smithsonian, and on This American Life. A Guggenheim Fellow and Whiting Award winner, Meyer has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, MacDowell, and the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Italy. Most recently he was a Fulbright scholar to Taiwan, and a fellow at Oxford University's Centre for LifeWriting. His latest book is Benjamin Franklin's Last Bet: The Favorite Founder's Divisive Death, Enduring Afterlife, and Blueprint for American Prosperity (HarperCollins).
