Eric Schlosser

• Name — Eric Schlosser • Birth Name — Eric Matthew Schlosser • Born — 17 August 1959 • Birthplace — New York City, U.S. • Occupation — Investigative writer • Period — 1995—present • Genre — Non-fiction • Education — Princeton University (BA) Oriel College, Oxford (MLitt) • Notable Works — Fast Food Nation (2001) Reefer Madness (2003)

Schlosser was born in New York City; he spent his childhood there and in Los Angeles. His parents are Judith (née Gassner) and Herbert Schlosser, a former Wall Street lawyer who turned to broadcasting later in his career, eventually becoming president of NBC in 1974 and later becoming a vice president of RCA. He is of Jewish descent.

Schlosser graduated with an A.B. in history from Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey in 1982 after completing a 148 pages long senior thesis titled "Academic Freedom during the McCarthy Era: Anti-Communism, Conformity and Princeton." He then earned a Master of Letters in British Imperial History from Oriel College, Oxford. He wrote two plays, Americans (1985) and We the People (2007).

He is married to Shauna Redford, daughter of actor Robert Redford. They have two children.

Schlosser started his career as a journalist with The Atlantic Monthly in Boston. He quickly gained recognition with investigative pieces, earning two awards within two years of joining the staff: he won the National Magazine Award for reporting in his two-part series "Reefer Madness" and "Marijuana and the Law" (The Atlantic Monthly, August and September 1994). He won the Sidney Hillman Foundation award for his article "In the Strawberry Fields" (The Atlantic Monthly, November 19, 1995). Schlosser wrote Fast Food Nation (2001), an exposé on the unsanitary and discriminatory practices of the fast food industry. Fast Food Nation evolved from a two-part article in Rolling Stone. The book won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award for Nonfiction. Schlosser helped adapt his book into a 2006 film directed by Richard Linklater. The film opened November 19, 2006. Chew On This (2006), co-written with Charles Wilson, is an adaptation of the book for younger readers. Fortune called Fast Food Nation the "Best Business Book of the Year" in 2001. His 2003 book Reefer Madness discusses the history and trade of marijuana, the use of migrant workers in California strawberry fields, the American pornography industry and the history of said industry. William F. Buckley, Jr. gave Reefer Madness a favorable review as did BusinessWeek. Schlosser's book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety was published in September 2013. It focuses on the 1980 Damascus Titan missile explosion, a non-nuclear explosion of a Titan II missile near Damascus, Arkansas. The New Yorkers Louis Menand called it "excellent" and "hair-raising". He said that "Command and Control is how nonfiction should be written." It was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for History. Schlosser has been working on a book on the American prison system, which has been over 10 years in the making.

Eric Schlosser is recorded as having received The Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism.