Nicholas Dawidoff is a full-time writer. His five books include the best-selling The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg; In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music which Conde Nast Traveller named one of the greatest all-time works of travel literature; The Fly Swatter: Portrait of an Exceptional Character which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; his memoir of his childhood, The Crowd Sounds Happy which won the Kenneth Johnson Book Award for an outstanding contribution to the study of mental illness; and the recently-published Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football which was named to several 2013 best-books lists and was called “an instant classic by The New York Times. He contributes regularly to The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, an Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University, a Civitella Ranieri Fellow in the arts, and a Berlin Prize Fellow of the American Academy. A New Haven native and a graduate of Harvard University, he recently moved back to his home town with his family.