E. J. Dionne

E.J. Dionne
E.J.Dionne
Born	Eugene Joseph Dionne (1952-04-23) April 23, 1952 Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Occupation	Author, columnist
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Portsmouth Abbey School Harvard University Balliol College, Oxford
Subjects	religion, history, politics, left-wing politics
Spouse(s)	Mary Boyle
Children	James, Julia, Margot
Influences Lane Kirkland,

Eugene Joseph "E. J." Dionne, Jr. (/diːˈɒn/; born April 23, 1952) is an American journalist and political commentator, and a long-time op-ed columnist for The Washington Post. He is also a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, a University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at Georgetown Public Policy Institute, a Senior Research Fellow at Saint Anselm College, and an NPR, MSNBC, and PBS commentator.

Life and career

Dionne was born in Boston, Massachusetts on April 23, 1952. He is the son of the late Lucienne (née Galipeau), a librarian and teacher, and Eugene J. Dionne, a dentist, and was raised in Fall River, Massachusetts. He is of French-Canadian descent. He attended Portsmouth Abbey School, (then known as Portsmouth Priory), a Benedictine college preparatory school in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Dionne holds a B.A. in Social Studies from Harvard University (1973), where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was affiliated with Adams House, and a DPhil in Sociology from Balliol College, Oxford (1982), where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Dionne's published works include the influential 1991 bestseller Why Americans Hate Politics, which argued that several decades of political polarization was alienating a silent centrist majority. It was characterized as radical centrist by Time magazine. Later books include They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era (1996), Stand up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and Politics of Revenge (2004), Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right (2008), and "Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent(2012).

Dionne is a columnist for Commonweal, a liberal Catholic publication. Before becoming a columnist for the Post in 1993, he worked as a reporter for that paper as well as The New York Times.

Dionne lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Mary Boyle, and three children, James, Julia, and Margot. He also has one sibling, CAPT Lucie-Anne Dionne-Thomas, JAGC, USN (ret.), of Middletown, RI, who also served as a civilian Navy attorney.

Writings

• Why Americans Hate Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. ISBN 978-0-671-68255-2
• They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. ISBN 978-0-684-80768-3
• Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America (editor). Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1998 ISBN 0-8157-1867-5
• Stand Up, Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. ISBN 978-0-7432-5858-6
• Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. ISBN 0-691-13458-8
• Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent. New York: Bloomsbury, 2012. ISBN 1608192016

See also

• Co-commentator on NPR: David Brooks (journalist).

External links

• Washington Post columns
• Brookings Institution page
• Georgetown Faculty web page
• Works by or about E. J. Dionne in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• NPR page
• Truthdig page
• Biography from the Washington Post Writers Group
• "Conversation with History" interview
• Booknotes interview with Dionne on Why Americans Hate Politics, August 25, 1991.