Rachel Dickinson is a writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications including The Atlantic, Smithsonian.com, Outside, Men’s Journal, American Way, Aeon, Salon, and Audubon. She has been awarded two Travel Classics awards, an American Society of Journalists and Authors award for best book, a National Endowment for the Humanities Youth Fellowship, and a coveted Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. The author of Falconer on the Edge: A Man, His Birds, and the Vanishing Landscape of the American West, she lives in Freeville, New York.

“In American Dynasties Rachel Dickinson delivers a proper primer on a sampling of the funneling of talent – and often luck – through the generations of oligarchs and artists. Missteps get repeated, but often so do successes. The unpredictable nature of American society, according to Dickinson, makes it so there is no consistent playbook.”—Robert Strauss, author of “Worst. President. Ever.” and “Final Founder: John Marshall.”