Daniel Mendelsohn is an American author and critic. Mendelsohn was born on Long Island and raised in the town of Old Bethpage, New York. He attended the University of Virginia from 1978 to 1982 as an Echols Scholar, graduating with a B. A. summa cum laude in Classics. From 1982 to 1985, he resided in New York City, working as an assistant to an opera impresario, Joseph A. Scuro. In March 1985 Mendelsohn returned to Charlottesville, VA, to prepare for graduate school, and lived there until began his graduate work in Classics at Princeton University the following year. He received his M. A. in... 1989 and his Ph. D. in 1994. His dissertation, later published as a scholarly monograph by Oxford University Press, was on Euripidean tragedy. Mendelsohn began contributing reviews, Op-Eds, and essays to such publications as QW, New York Times, The Nation, and The Village Voice in 1991, while still a graduate student; after completing his Ph. D. in 1994, he moved to New York City and began writing full-time.
more