An unlikely Renaissance man and the nation’s last, best hope for the new millennium, Ben Stein will make you laugh and amaze you with what he’s done—because there’s little he hasn’t done.
Besides having one of the most recognizable voices on television, Ben Stein is a humorist, financial whiz, lawyer, columnist, presidential speech writer, best-selling author and an expert on bringing meaning to both life and work.
More than a humorist, Stein is also an author and exceptionally gifted economist whose astute investment and market analysis have been sought by companies and organizations across the country. His latest book is The Gift of Peace: Guideposts on the Road to Serenity.
Ben Stein (Benjamin J. Stein) was born November 25, 1944 in Washington, D.C. (He is the son of the economist and writer Herbert Stein), grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland and attended Montgomery Blair High School. He graduated from Columbia University in 1966 with honors in economics. In 1970 he graduated from Yale Law School, elected valedictorian by his class. He helped to found the Journal of Law and Social Policy while at Yale. He has worked as a poverty lawyer in New Haven and Washington, D.C., a trail lawyer in the field of trade regulation at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., a university adjunct at American University in Washington, D.C., University of California at Santa Cruz, and Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA. At American University, he taught about the political and social content of mass culture. He taught the same subject at UCSC, as well as political and civil rights under the Constitution. At Pepperdine, he has taught libel law, securities law and ethical issues since 1986.
In 1973 and 1974, he was a speech writer and lawyer for Richard Nixon at the White House and then for Gerald Ford. (He did NOT write the line, “I am not a crook.”) He has been a columnist and editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal, a syndicated columnist for The Los Angeles Herald Examiner (R.I.P.) as well as the King Features syndicate and a frequent contributor to Barron’s where his articles about the ethics of management buyouts and issues of fraud in the Milken Drexel junk bond scheme drew major national attention. He has been a regular columnist for Los Angeles Magazine, New York Magazine, E! Online, and has written a lengthy diary for ten years for The American Spectator. He also writes frequently for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and almost every other imaginable magazine.
He is also presently at work on a detective show for CBS. He lives with his wife Alexandra Denman (former lawyer), his son Tommy, four cats and two large dogs in Beverly Hills.
