My name is Sasha Abramsky. I was born in England in 1972, grew up in London, and studied politics, philosophy, and economics at Balliol College, Oxford. I got my B.A. in 1993 and moved to New York to study journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. I lived in the Big Apple for ten years, before moving to California in 2003. I currently live in Sacramento with my wife and two kids. 

My latest book is Jumping at Shadows, a searing account of America’s most dangerous epidemic: irrational fear. Taking readers on a dramatic journey through a divided nation, where everything from immigration to disease, gun control to health care has become fodder for fearmongers and conspiracists, Jumping at Shadows is an eye-popping analysis of our misconceptions about risk and threats. What emerges is a shocking portrait of a political and cultural landscape that is, increasingly, defined by our worst fears and rampant anxieties. You can listen to me discuss Jumping at Shadows on Capital Public Radio’s Insight program.

The House of Twenty Thousand Books is a family memoir about my grandparents, Chimen and Miriam Abramsky, and of their unique home at 5 Hillway. In their semi-detached house, so deceptively ordinary from the outside, they created a remarkable House of Books. It became the repository for Chimen s collection of thousands upon thousands of books, manuscripts and other printed, handwritten and painted documents, representing his journey through the great political, philosophical, religious and ethical debates that have shaped the western world. Here is a video trailer for the book.

I teach writing one day a week at the U.C. Davis writing program, am a fellow at the New York City-based Demos think tank, and spend most of the rest of my work-time reporting and writing magazine articles and books. For the past two years, I have worked on  Voices of Poverty: A Narrative of America’s Poor. It has provided the material for my book on poverty 21st-century-style, The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives. Here is the YouTube trailer for the book.

My previous book, Inside Obama’s Brain, was published by Penguin’s Portfolio imprint (December, 2009).

If you want to contact me, my email is: Sabramsky@sbcglobal.net. I am available for speaking engagements.

An in-depth discussion of Inside Obama’s Brain at UC Davis can be seen here.

Here is a video of me speaking about hunger in America on GRITtv.