I was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and went to Colgate University where I studied history and German. I earned a master's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

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For fifteen years, I worked as a journalist for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, Newsday, and The Wall Street Journal. I served as the Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal in Berlin and London. In 2023, I retired from a New York money management firm where I was a partner and a member of the board of a mutual fund.

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In my 2015 book, The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger, I explore how Fugger, a banker from Renaissance, Germany, triggered the Reformation, enabled Spain's Charles V to build an empire that spanned half the globe, and created the world's first low-income housing project. My 2022 book, American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune, argues Gould was as rich, ruthless and powerful as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and other Gilded Age contemporaries but has been largely forgotten because he didn't live long enough to build a philanthropic legacy. 

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My 2026 book, The President and the Oligarch reveals the secret sinister side of Roosevelt—and explains how big government won out of over the libertarian economic order that had reigned since the birth of the republic.