In brief
Rich Cohen (born July 30, 1968) is an American nonfiction author, journalist, and screenwriter renowned for his narrative-driven explorations of American history, culture, Jewish identity, and sports, many of which have become New York Times bestsellers. A native of the Chicago area, Cohen graduated from Tulane University with a B.A. in 1990 and began his career writing for Rolling Stone magazine in the early 1990s, later becoming a contributing editor there as well as at Vanity Fair. His work has appeared in prestigious outlets including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal, where he serves as a columnist, and he holds the position of editor at large for Air Mail.
Cohen's breakthrough came with his 1998 debut book, Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams, a vivid account of Jewish gangsters in mid-20th-century America that challenged stereotypes and earned critical acclaim for its gritty storytelling. He followed with memoirs like Lake Effect (2002), reflecting on youthful friendships in the Midwest, and family histories such as Sweet and Low (2005), which chronicles the rise of the artificial sweetener empire founded by his mother's family. Other notable works include The Fish That Ate the Whale (2012), a biography of banana magnate Sam Zemurray that illuminates early 20th-century imperialism and entrepreneurship; Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football (2013), capturing the cultural impact of the Super Bowl-winning team; and The Chicago Cubs: The Story of a Curse (2017), blending sports history with personal reflection on his hometown team. More recent titles, such as The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones (2016) and When the Game Was War: The NBA's Greatest Season (2023), showcase his range in music and basketball narratives, along with Murder in the Dollhouse: The Jennifer Dulos Story (2025), a true crime account of a suburban mother's disappearance.
Rich Cohen was born on July 30, 1968, in Lake Forest, Illinois, and raised in the affluent North Shore suburb of Glencoe, near Chicago, after his family relocated there in 1972 from Libertyville, where they had been the only Jewish family in the community. His upbringing in this environment exposed him early to a blend of suburban Midwestern life and Jewish-American traditions, shaping his later explorations of identity and community in his writing.
Cohen grew up in a close-knit Jewish family; his father, Herb Cohen, was a prominent negotiator, author of the 1979 bestseller You Can Negotiate Anything, and founder of the Power Negotiations Institute, which operated from a Northbrook office overlooking the Edens Expressway. His mother, Ellen Cohen, supported the family business by managing logistics for Herb's seminars and designing its logo. Cohen was the youngest of three siblings: his sister, Sharon Cohen Levin, who later became a prominent prosecutor and partner at Sullivan & Cromwell after serving as chief of the money laundering and asset forfeiture unit in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York; and his brother, Steven Cohen, a lawyer.
The family's dynamic profoundly influenced Cohen's early worldview, particularly through his father's career, which emphasized negotiation as an art of storytelling drawn from Jewish biblical traditions, such as Abraham's haggling with God over Sodom and Gomorrah. Herb often brought his children along to seminars across the Midwest, where young Rich helped set up chairs and absorbed lessons in persuasion and narrative craft that later informed his journalistic style.
