Dorothy Wickenden is the author of Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West, an acclaimed biography, family memoir, and portrait of the settling of the American West. She has been the executive editor of The New Yorker since 1996 and prior to that was an editor at Newsweek and at The New Republic. She edited The New Republic Reader: 80 Years of Opinion and Debate and is on the faculty of The Writers' Institute at CUNY's Graduate Center.