John Matteson

Who is John Matteson?

John Matteson is an American professor of English and legal writing at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2008 for his first book, Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father.

Matteson is the son of Thomas D. Matteson, an airline executive jointly responsible for developing the theory of Reliability Centered Maintenance, and Rosemary H. Matteson, who worked as a commercial artist before becoming a homemaker.

Matteson attended Menlo School in Atherton, California. He earned an A.B. in history from Princeton University in 1983, a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1986, and a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University in 1999. He served as a law clerk for U.S. District Court Judge Terrence W. Boyle before working as a litigation attorney at Titchell, Maltzman, Mark, Bass, Ohleyer & Mishel in San Francisco and with Maupin, Taylor, Ellis & Adams in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has written articles for a wide variety of publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New England Quarterly, Streams of William James, and Leviathan.