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. 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, which tells the story of an Indigenous group that came to run a diamond mine in the Amazon, was described by Greg Grandin as “a wondrous combination of Heart of Darkness and In Cold Blood, a nonfiction novel of modern conquest, capitalism, and murder.” It was a nonfiction finalist for the California Book Awards.

A former Bloomberg staffer, I've written about the Amazon's ecological tipping point for The New York Times Magazine, an article featured in 2024's Best American Science and Nature Writing. I've also reported on Rio de Janeiro's evangelical drug lords for Harper's and on Iraq's Yezidis for Lapham's Quarterly, in addition to shorter pieces for The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post, among others. 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. There I was assigned to the billionaire beat, the basis for my first book. I lived in Brazil for six years and, for my second book, spent another six years reporting from the Amazon rainforest.

After stints in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam, I now live with my wife and son in San Francisco. Outside work, I'm an avid rock climber.