Evan Osnos
Pulitzer Prize winner | Staff Writer, The New Yorker | Bestselling Author, "Wildland" and "Age of Ambition"
Evan Osnos is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker, a host of The Political Scene podcast, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Known for his witty, articulate and accessible commentary, rich with behind-the-scenes insights from the halls of power, he illuminates politics and foreign affairs spanning the U.S., the Middle East, East Asia, and China. Osnos presents cutting-edge assessments of the biggest stories of the day, from U.S.-China tensions and the struggle for Ukraine, polarization of our nation and the rebuilding of civic ties, as well as the implications of A.I. and globalization. An eloquent speaker, Osnos offers a balanced and thorough view of global events that brings clarity to a time when many are tempted to turn away from the news.
Evan’s new book, The Haves and Have-Yachts (June 2025), focuses on the ultrarich and the new gilded age. With deft storytelling and meticulous reporting, this is a book about the indulgences, incentives, and psychological distortions that define our economic age.
His previous book, Wildland: The Making of America's Fury, which was an instant New York Times bestseller, in 2021. Publishers Weekly called it an “engrossing and revealing look at how deeply connected yet far apart Americans are.” Hailed as a prescient analysis of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the book was described in the Washington Post as a “sprawling, fascinating journey through the dawning decades of the 21st century . . . Osnos weaves an intricate tapestry that gradually reveals how Americans experienced the last two decades.” The book brings to life Osnos’s return to three places he has lived — Greenwich, CT; Clarksburg, WV; and Chicago, IL — to illuminate the sources of America’s political divisions and the pathways to repairing them.
He launched his career at the Chicago Tribune, where he co-authored an investigation that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001, for uncovering problems in American aviation. In 2008, he co-wrote another investigative project that won the Pulitzer Prize, revealing the source of unsafe imports on American shelves. In 2014, his first book, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Based on eight years of living in Beijing, it is a multi-layered look at the individual's rise in China and the clash between aspiration and authoritarianism. In 2020, he published Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now, a concise, and trenchant examination of Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s lifelong quest for the presidency. It was an international best-seller and a Financial Times Best Book of the year.
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The Haves and Have-Yachts: Navigating the Age of the Ultrarich
The ultrarich now control more of America’s wealth than in the days of the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers. National Book Award winner Evan Osnos offers a wry, unfiltered look at how money shapes our time—monumentalizing itself in steel and stone, fueling philanthropy’s mix of self-interest and civic duty, and wielding technology to shape what we see and believe. With deft storytelling, he unpacks the fabulous, absurd, and unsettling: pop stars at kids’ parties, status anxieties in Palm Beach, and real-world Succession-like dramas. Drawing from his bestselling book Wildland and his forthcoming The Haves and Have-Yachts, Osnos takes us from Mark Zuckerberg’s Palo Alto living room to a retired coal miner’s kitchen in West Virginia. Timely and eye-opening, this talk reveals the forces behind wealth, influence, and the growing backlash they provoke—offering a deeper understanding of us all.
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Clarity In a Year of Uncertainty
One of America’s preeminent political journalists, Evan Osnos has spent the past 25 years in the hot spots that shape our world today: Washington, China, Ukraine, the Middle East. Fresh from in-depth coverage of the 2024 presidential campaign, he is known for rare prescience and access, having published books on Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Xi Jinping. He focuses on overlooked leadership dynamics and behind-the-scenes dramas that reverberate through business, politics, and foreign affairs. A sought-after guest on television and radio, he isolates the most revealing anecdotes and facts from a complicated world, to give audiences a renewed sense of clarity in a time of uncertainty. Among his most popular speeches, a lively tour of global hotspots goes inside the White House, the halls of Chinese leadership, and to the frontlines of Ukraine and Israel, for an up-to-the-minute sense of where the world is heading.
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Wildland: Unearthing – and Healing -- America’s Divisions
America’s latest presidential election showed us the limits of polls and forecasts. Gaining a deeper sense of the national mood means asking different questions: What is strengthening dignity, and what is eroding it? Where are we becoming more connected, and where are we drifting apart? How have the social impacts of technology and trade changed our patterns? Tracing how Americans lost a vision for the common good helps us see the pathways to regaining it. Across the country, promising efforts are showing us the power of renewed civic engagement, local knowledge, and voluntary service. In this inspiring, non-partisan presentation, rich with surprising anecdotes and science, National Book Award-winning author Evan Osnos (whose 2021 book Wildland was a New York Times bestseller) brings audiences into the art of resilience, enlivened by real-world stories of those who rebuild the ties that bind us.
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Superpower Politics: Navigating China, Russia, and America in 2025
Starbucks is opening a new store in China every fifteen hours; TikTok is redefining American social media. Business continues even as U.S. and Chinese jets jockey in the skies over the South China Sea, and Russia raises the threat of nuclear confrontation. For the first time in a generation, the world is divided by great-power politics, but, unlike the Cold War, the U.S. and China are also economically entwined on an unprecedented scale. How do leaders in Washington, Beijing, and Moscow really talk, behind closed doors, about the future? What is hype and what is real? What are the rules that companies, consumers, and global citizens can rely on to thrive in an age of big-power competition? With insights from across the globe, Evan Osnos is a Pulitzer Prize-winning storyteller and analyst, who combines deep knowledge with up-to-the-minute insights on the new global balance of power. Are the East and West on a collision course, or can we find common ground? A vibrant narrative analysis of the players and the issues.
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