Bruce Feiler

Bruce Feiler (born October 25, 1964) is an American writer and television personality. He is the author of 12 books, including six consecutive New York Times nonfiction best-sellers. He writes the "This Life" column in the Sunday New York Times and is also the writer/presenter of the PBS miniseries Walking the Bible and Sacred Journeys with Bruce Feiler (2014).

Feiler is credited with formulating the Feiler Faster Thesis: the increasing pace of society and journalists' ability to report it is matched by the public's desire for more information.

He has written for numerous publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Gourmet magazine, where he won three James Beard Awards. He is also a frequent contributor to National Public Radio, CNN, and Fox News.

A native of Savannah, Georgia, where he attended the Savannah Country Day School, Feiler lives in New York with his wife, Linda Rottenberg, and their twin daughters. Rottenberg, who frequently appears in his books, is co-founder and CEO of Endeavor, a nonprofit that supports High-Impact Entrepreneurs.

Feiler completed his undergraduate degree at Yale University where he was a member of Ezra Stiles College, before spending time teaching English in Japan as part of the JET Program. This experience led to his first book, Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan, a popular portrait of life in a small Japanese town. Upon his return he earned a master's degree in international relations from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, which he chronicled in his book Looking for Class.

Bruce Feiler's recent work made him a respected authority on religion, politics, and relevant emotional issues. With The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More Feiler has drawn up a blueprint for modern families — a new approach to family dynamics, inspired by techniques gathered from experts in the disciplines of science, business, sports, and the military.The result is a funny and thought-provoking playbook for contemporary families.

A story he wrote about the book for the New York Times, called "The Stories that Bind Us," discussed how the more children know about their family history, the higher their well-being and resilience. The piece was on the most-emailed list for a month. Feiler also did a popular TED talk about the book.

Generation Freedom: The Middle East Uprisings and the Remaking of the Modern World explores the unprecedented, youth-driven revolutions of the Arab Spring. Feiler draws on 15 years of traveling across the region and offers a behind-the-scenes portrait of youth culture in the region while marching in Liberation Square, confronting the head of the Muslim Brotherhood, and witnessing a dramatic rebuilding of a church just as sectarian violence threatens the peaceful movement.

Walking the Bible describes his perilous, 10,000-mile journey retracing the Five Books of Moses through the desert. The book was hailed as an "instant classic" by the Washington Post and "thoughtful, informed, and perceptive" by The New York Times. It spent more than a year and a half on the New York Times best-seller list, has been translated into fifteen languages, and is the subject of a children's book and a photography book.

In 2006, PBS aired the miniseries Walking the Bible that received record ratings and was viewed by 20 million people in its first month. "Beguiling," wrote the Wall Street Journal. "Mr. Feiler is an engaging and informed guide."

In The Council of Dads: A Story of Family, Friendship & Learning How to Live, Feiler describes how, after learning he had a seven-inch osteosarcoma in his left femur, he asked six men from all passages of his life to be present through the passages of his young daughters’ lives. "I believe my daughters will have plenty of opportunities in their lives," he wrote these men. "They’ll have loving families. They’ll have each other. But they may not have me. They may not have their dad. Will you help be their dad?"

The book was featured on the cover of USA Weekend, on The Today Show, and in People magazine. Dr. Sanjay Gupta made a documentary about the story on CNN. Feiler began an initiative with 23andMe to decode the genome of patients with primary bone cancers.

Abraham recounts his personal search for the shared ancestor of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. "Exquisitely written," wrote the Boston Globe, "100 percent engaging." The book was featured on the cover of TIME Magazine, became a runaway New York Times best-seller, and inspired thousands of grassroots interfaith discussions.

Where God Was Born describes his year-long trek retracing the Bible through Israel, Iraq, and Iran. "Bruce Feiler is a real-life Indiana Jones," wrote the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story discusses the significance of Moses as a symbolic prophet throughout four-hundred years of American history. Both books were New York Times best-sellers. He also wrote about the role of Moses as a defining influence in American life, including the presidency of Barack Obama, in TIME Magazine.

Feiler's early books involve immersing himself in different cultures and bringing other worlds to life. These include Learning to Bow, an account of the year he spent teaching in rural Japan; Looking for Class, about life inside Oxford and Cambridge; and Under the Big Top, which depicts the year he spent performing as a clown in the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus.