Peter Schweizer

Peter Schweizer is the William J. Casey Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and a best-selling author. He is a partner in the Washington, D.C. firm Oval Office Writers which provides speechwriting and communications services for corporate executives and political figures.

From 2008-9 he was a consultant to the Office of Presidential Speechwriting in the White House. He has also served as a member of the Ultraterrorism Study Group at the U.S. government’s Sandia National Laboratory and is a former consultant to NBC News.

His books have been translated into eleven languages and include several New York Times or Washington Post bestsellers.

His most recent book is Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pocket (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011). It was the subject of a feature on CBS’ 60 Minutes. The book comes on the heels of the highly successful Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011).

His other non-fiction books include Reagan’s War (Doubleday, 2002), which the Washington Post praised as “A fascinating, well-written, useful and important look at one of the three or four most important American political leaders of the 20th century. No serious assessment of the 40th president of the United States can ignore the central importance of anti-communism in his career; after Schweizer none will.” The Los Angeles Times called it “A rousing and compelling case that Reagan’s personal and political odyssey…was central to bringing down the ‘evil empire.” He is also the co-author of The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty (Doubleday, 2004), which the New York Times called “Fascinating…Provides illuminating insights into the internal dynamics of the Bush family dynasty.” The New York Post declared “If you want to know as fully as can be told the story of how the Bushes rose from Midwestern obscurity to equal the records of families like the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, and the Adamses—this is the book.”

Other non-fiction works include Architects of Ruin (Harper, 2009) Victory (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994) , Do As I Say (Not As I Do) (Doubleday, 2005) and Makers and Takers (Doubleday, 2008).

His academic books include Landmark Speeches of the American Conservative Movement (Texas A&M University Press, 2006) The Reagan Presidency: Assessing the Man and His Legacy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), and The Fall Of The Wall: Reassessing the Causes and Consequences of the End of the Cold War (Hoover Institution Press, 2000). He was also a contributor to Living in the Eighties (Oxford University Press, 2008)

His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on numerous radio and television programs.

Peter received his M.Phil. from Oxford University and his B.A. from George Washington University. He lives in Florida.