Miriam Pawel

Miriam Pawel is an author, journalist and independent historian. Her recent work has sought to explain her adopted home state of California, drawing on history to inform the present and illuminate the future. Her most recent book, The Browns of California — The Family Dynasty that Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation (Bloomsbury, 2018) traces the history of California through four generations of the family of Governors Pat and Jerry Brown. The Browns of California was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the California Book Award Gold Medal. Miriam’s prior book, The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography (Bloomsbury, 2014), which she worked on at Mesa Refuge, won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize, the California Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. Before focusing on the second cut of history, Miriam spent 25 years as an award-winning journalist, directing coverage that won Pulitzer prizes at both Newsday and the Los Angeles Times.  She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and a 2020-2021 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.