I'm a journalist and author, and I recently joined ProPublica as a climate reporter.
My first book, BRAZILLIONAIRES, is "a compelling tale of Brazil’s superrich, which deftly weaves lurid soap opera with high finance and outrageous political skulduggery," according to The Wall Street Journal. Doubling as a portrait of modern Brazil, it grew from my experience as a reporter on Bloomberg's “billionaires team” in São Paulo. It was a Financial Times best book of 2016 and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
My second book, WHEN WE SOLD GOD'S EYE, is “the gripping and astonishing story of how a small [Indigenous] group in the Amazon, invaded and brutally treated by white settlers and miners, ended up exploiting an illicit diamond mine themselves,” in the words of author Douglas Preston. It's based on six years of immersive reporting and research, and it was a nonfiction finalist for the 2025 California Book Awards.
I've also written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post, among others. My stories have been featured on Longform.org and in Best American Science and Nature Writing, and I've reported from Brazil, Colombia, Iraq, Mexico, Venezuela, and the United States. I've received grants from the Pulitzer Center, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and the Alicia Patterson Foundation.
Born in New York City, I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and studied creative writing and Latin American literature at Sarah Lawrence College. I started my journalism career as a freelancer in Bogotá in 2008 before moving to São Paulo to work for Bloomberg. After eight years in South America, I bounced from Brooklyn to London to Dar Es Salaam to Nairobi, finally landing in San Francisco, where I live with my wife and son. Outside work, I'm an avid rock climber.