John Tierney

John Tierney is a journalist and bestselling author. He’s a contributing editor to City Journal, a contributing science columnist to the New York Times, and has written for dozens of magazines and newspapers. His reporting has taken him to all seven continents, and his books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

His latest book, co-authored with the social psychologist Roy Baumeister, is "The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It." It has been praised by P.J. O’Rourke as “the best bad news ever” and described by Martin Seligman, the eminent psychologist, as “the most important book at the borderland of psychology and politics that I have ever read.” 

He and Baumeister previously co-wrote New York Times best-seller, "Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength." The psychologist Steven Pinker, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called it “an immensely rewarding book, filled with ingenious research, wise advice and insightful reflections on the human condition.”

During more than two decades at the New York Times, he was a science columnist, an Op-Ed columnist, and a staff writer for the Times Magazine. He wrote about New York in a column, “The Big City,” which ran in the Times Magazine and in the Metro section.

John’s books include what he calls an “alleged work of humor,” "The Best-Case Scenario Handbook," which explains, among other things, how to deal with a broken ATM spewing cash and how to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. He is also the co-author, with Christopher Buckley, of novel parodying self-help books: "God Is My Broker: A Monk Tycoon Reveals the 7 ½ Laws of Spiritual and Financial Growth."