I'm a journalist and author, and I recently joined ProPublica as a climate reporter.
My first book, BRAZILLIONAIRES, is "a compelling tale of Brazil’s superrich, which deftly weaves lurid soap opera with high finance and outrageous political skulduggery," according to The Wall Street Journal. Doubling as a portrait of modern Brazil, it grew from the nearly two years I spent as part of Bloomberg's “billionaires team” in São Paulo. It was a Financial Times best book of 2016 and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
My second book, WHEN WE SOLD GOD'S EYE, is “the gripping and astonishing story of how a small [Indigenous] group in the Amazon, invaded and brutally treated by white settlers and miners, ended up exploiting an illicit diamond mine themselves,” in the words of Douglas Preston. It's based on six years of research and immersive reporting among the Cinta Larga people, and it was a finalist for the California Book Awards.
I've written about the Amazon's ecological tipping point for The New York Times Magazine, about Rio de Janeiro's evangelical drug lords for Harper's, and about Iraq's Yezidis for Lapham's Quarterly. A former Bloomberg staff reporter, I've also written shorter pieces for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post, among others. My stories have been featured on Longform.org and in Best American Science and Nature Writing, and I've received reporting grants from the Pulitzer Center, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and the Alicia Patterson Foundation.
Born in New York City, I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and studied creative writing and Latin American literature at Sarah Lawrence College. I started my journalism career as a freelancer in Bogotá in 2008 before moving to São Paulo to work for Bloomberg. After living there for six years, I bounced from Brooklyn to London to Dar Es Salaam and Nairobi. I now live with my wife and son in San Francisco. Outside work, I'm an avid rock climber.