What surprising job have you had in the past?

“Track layer” for dog tracking events. Tracking is the sport version of search and rescue. It involves having a dog track a person, and my job was to walk the track.

What would you want to be doing if not teaching?

I assume you mean if I weren’t a research economist, since teaching and research go hand in hand. I would be a field biologist.

What do you hate that everyone else loves?

Peanut butter. I’m so repulsed by the substance that I’ve never tasted it.

What do you love that everyone else hates?

Cottage cheese.

What was the last book you finished?

An insightful book on the history of women’s rights and protective labor legislation in the United States by Nancy Woloch: A Class by Herself.

What was the last book you recommended to a friend?

The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni, a recent translation from the Italian (I promessi sposi). The book is assigned to all Italian high school students and is considered the greatest Italian novel. Why? Because it brilliantly weaves together love, power, history, the Catholic Church, and the unification of the Italian language. Highly recommended (but not to an Italian high school student).

What was the last book you put down before you finished it?

Stephen Greenblatt’s The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve (but maybe I’ll finish it someday). I loved his book The Swerve.

What book—or other work or idea—do you relish teaching?

Any book that makes an important historical point and does so with simple, elegant economics and believable empirical work.

What book changed your life?

Like many, I was greatly influenced by Microbe Hunters, by Paul de Kruif.

What person, alive or dead, would you want to write your life story?

I would want my story told by one of my childhood friends. They won’t know anything about me as an adult, but that part is better known. I’d like to know what I was like as a child.

What’s your least useful talent?

Correcting other people’s grammar. No one seems to care.

Tell us the best piece of advice you’ve received—or the worst.

The best: Write, rewrite, and rewrite again (and again). And the corollary: If you haven’t written something, you can’t rewrite it.

What advice would you give to a brand-new Maroon?

Follow your passions. Don’t worry about changing direction if you discover something new.

Who was your best teacher, and why?

I assume that “teacher” means before college. My best teacher was Mr. Kotkin at the Bronx High School of Science, who taught a course in microbiology dubbed “Piss and Pus.”

What UChicago classroom moment will you never forget?

Being in Milton Friedman’s (AM’33) macroeconomics class and realizing that I didn’t understand the role of money in the economy. That was what the entire course concerned. It took me a while, but I caught on (somewhat). I adored Milton!