Dorothy Wickenden is the author of "Nothing Daunted" and "The Agitators," and has been the executive editor of The New Yorker since January 1996. She also writes for the magazine and is the moderator of its weekly podcast The Political Scene. A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, Wickenden was national affairs editor at Newsweek from 1993-1995, and before that was the longtime executive editor at The New Republic.
In "The Agitators," Wickenden uses the intimate perspective of three friends and neighbors in mid-nineteenth century Auburn, New York to the fascinating and crucially American stories of abolition, the underground railroad, the early women’s rights movement, and the Civil War.