Eric Schlosser

Eric Matthew Schlosser (born August 17, 1959) is an American journalist and food writer. He is known for his books Fast Food Nation, Reefer Madness (2003), and Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (2013).

Early life 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.

Education 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).

Personal life He is married to Shauna Redford, daughter of actor Robert Redford. They have two children. 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 Yorker'''s 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.