Eric Alterman is a professor of journalism in the Brooklyn College English Department and was named a distinguished professor of English by the CUNY Board of Trustees in 2007. His latest book, Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America, was published last spring. As a journalist, author, and political blogger, he is both revered and hated, depending on the political viewpoint of the observer.

Staunch conservatives regard him as an implacable opponent, but he has also feuded with some who wear the liberal label. Equally comfortable in the classroom and in TV studios, Alterman was hired as a political commentator by MSNBC in 1996. Altercation, the daily weblog he started under the network’s auspices in 2002, was picked up by Media Matter for America in 2006. He is also a regular columnist for the liberal weekly The Nation.

His first book, Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy (HarperCollins, 1992), won the George Orwell Award. In addition to Why We’re Liberals, his seventh title, he has published When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences (Viking, 2004), and What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News (Basic Books, 2003). Before joining BC, Alterman was an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University and Columbia University.

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