Biography
Early years
Kaplan was born to a Jewish family, the son of Erna and Alan William Kaplan. His father was a surgeon and his mother, a clinical social worker at the university health service of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His great-great-grandfather was Adolph Bergida, a founder of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. He is a cum laude graduate of Cornell University in 1978 and the New York University School of Law in 1981, where he won writing prizes in both his first and second years, as well as the school's upperclass Moot Court Competition. During the 1994-1995 academic year, he was a John S. Knight Fellow in Journalism at''Newsweek''
He had a 20-year career at '' Newsweek'', where he wrote dozens of cover stories, as well as edited the annual ''Newsweek-Kaplan College Guide''. Among his cover pieces at ''Newsweek'': "The New Rich of Silicon Valley", "The Most Hated Man in Baseball", profiles of Justices Clarence Thomas and William Brennan, "The Selling of Star Wars", "The birth of Netscape", "The Great Home Run Chase of 1998", "The Return of the Hale-Bopp Comet", and "The Secret Vote That Made George W. Bush President". His ''Newsweek'' cover story in 2006 broke the notorious''Fortune''
He worked for ''Fortune'' magazine for five years. For ''Fortune'', Kaplan's profiles included Charlie Rose, David Geffen, Shaquille O'Neal, Howard Schultz (of Starbucks), Ralph Nader, Marc Benioff (of Salesforce.com), David Boies, Dennis Kozlowski in prison, SAS, Haagen-Daz, Shake Shack, Mars Candy, Chipotle, Lou Dobbs, the former Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz, education entrepreneur Sal Khan, and Hostess Twinkies in bankruptcy. In July 2011, he wrote the much-debated cover story on "Tech Bubble 2.0." He's worked for a day on the Monopoly assembly line at Hasbro, at an Aeropostale register on Black Friday, and atop an asphalt tank at NuStar Energy. He also writes an occasional education column for the magazine.Books, teaching, and consulting
Kaplan's other books include ''The Silicon Boys'', a national bestseller that has been translated into six languages, and '' The Accidental President,'' an account of the Bush-Gore election dispute on which the Emmy-winning 2008 HBO feature film '' Recount'' is based. He is currently completing a book about the U.S. Supreme Court, scheduled to be published by Random House in 2018. His writing has also appeared on the front page of '' The New York Times'' and ''The New York Times'' Op-Ed Page, as well as in ''Food & Wine'', ''Wired'', ''Parenting'', ''Inc.'', ''Worth'', Backchannel, and ''The Washington Post''. In 1988, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award, which recognizes excellence by journalists than under 35; Kaplan's piece in the ''National Law Journal'', "Death Row Dilemma," was about the strange case of William Henry Drake, who came within hours of electrocution despite two lawyers knowing he had not in fact killed anybody; the story explored how attorney-client confidentiality can lead to astonishing results. These days, Kaplan writes for different publications, and consults for a range of CEOs, financial firms and other companies. since 2009, Kaplan has been an adjunct faculty of thePersonal life
In 1989, Kaplan married attorney Audrey Sue Feinberg in a Jewish ceremony in Bozman, Maryland. Kaplan lives north of New York City with his wife and their two sons.Honors
* 2007: Loeb Finalist (Magazines category), "Suspicions and Spies in Silicon Valley," ''Newsweek'', September 18, 2006. * 2008:Books
* ''Mine's Bigger: Tom Perkins and the Making of the Greatest Sailing Machine Ever Built'' (2007) * '' The Accidental President'' (2001) * ''The Silicon Boys'' (1999) * ''The Greatest Business Decisions of All-Time'' (contributor) (2012) * ''The 10 Laws of Trust'' (co-author, with Joel Peterson) (2016) * ''The Most Dangerous Branch: Inside the Supreme Court's Assault on the Constitution'' (2018)References
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