Eric Metaxas is the author of the New York Times #1 bestseller, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, which was named “Book of the Year” by the ECPA. Called a “biography of uncommon power,” Bonhoeffer appeared on numerous 2010 “Best of the Year” lists and was featured in the Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, The New Republic, Harper’s, Kirkus (starred review), NPR, FoxNews, C-SPAN’s Book TV, Christianity Today, The Weekly Standard, and First Things.
In a decidedly eclectic career, Eric Metaxas has written for VeggieTales, Chuck Colson, and the New York Times, three things not ordinarily in the same sentence. He is a best-selling author whose biographies, children’s books, and works of popular apologetics have been translated into German, Albanian, Portuguese, Spanish, Korean, Turkish, Galician, French, Complex Chinese, Dutch, Danish, Italian, Polish, and Macedonian. The Hartford Courant has declared figuring him out “like trying to stick a pushpin in a cyclone.”
He grew up in Danbury, Connecticut, attending the public schools there, and graduated from Yale University. At Yale he made a literary splash as editor of the Yale Record, the nation’s oldest college humor magazine. At graduation Eric was awarded two senior prizes for his undergraduate fiction. He was also “Class Day Speaker”, co-writing and -delivering “The Class History”, a satirical address that is a Yale commencement tradition. Metaxas’ humor writing was first published in the Atlantic Monthly, and has appeared in The New York Times. Woody Allen has called these pieces “quite funny.” Eric’s book and movie reviews, essays, and poetry have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Regeneration Quarterly, Christianity Today, National Review Online, Beliefnet, and First Things.
From 1988-1992, Metaxas was editorial director and head writer for Rabbit Ears Productions, writing over 20 children’s videos and books, which have won numerous Parent’s Choice Awards and three Grammy nominations for Best Children’s Recording. Eric also worked as a writer for VeggieTales, and his books include the #1 bestseller God Made You Special!
Metaxas was for two years a writer and editor for Chuck Colson’s Breakpoint, a nationally syndicated daily radio program with over 400 stations and a weekly audience of five million. Metaxas has been featured as a cultural commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and the Fox News Channel; and has discussed his own books on The History Channel, C-Span’s Book TV, Glenn Beck, and Hannity & Colmes. He has been featured on many radio programs, including NPR’s Morning Edition and Talk of the Nation, Hugh Hewitt, Bill Bennett, Janet Parshall’s America, Monica Crowley, and The Alan Colmes Show.
He is the founder and host of Socrates in the City: Conversations on the Examined Life, a monthly event of entertaining and thought-provoking discussions on ‘life, God, and other small topics’” that features such speakers as Dr. Francis Collins, Sir John Polkinghorne, Baroness Caroline Cox, N.T. Wright, Os Guinness and Peter Kreeft, and which was mentioned in a front-page story in the New York Times. The New Canaan Society, of which Eric is a founding and current member, was also mentioned in the article.
Eric’s biography, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery was published by HarperOne, and was the “official companion book” to the feature film, also titled Amazing Grace. The book appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, and was lauded by Stanley Crouch (”…a superb history of the British fight against slavery”; Former NYC Congressman Floyd Flake (”magnificent… will stand as a living landmark…”); John Wilson (”a crackling bonfire of clarity and truth.”); Rudy Giuliani (”better than the movie!”), and many others.