Jack Hitt

Biography

Jack Hitt is the cohost of the podcast Uncivil, which won the Peabody Award in 2018. His most recent book is Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character (Crown, 2012). He’s a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and Harper’s, and his nonfiction, for which he’s won the Livingston and Pope awards, also appears in the New Yorker, WIRED, and Vanity Fair. His book Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim’s Route into Spain (Simon & Schuster, 1994) was made into the 2010 motion picture The Way.

See Work

REPORTING / Fall 2020

More Lasting than Bronze

By Jack Hitt ,  Photography by Laura Boushnak

Touring the Architecture of Revisionism

Children play in Andrićgrad, a kind of Serb-nationalist theme park. Višegrad, June 2020. 
ESSAYS / Fall 2017

The Meaning of Antonin Scalia

By Jack Hitt ,  Illustration by Chris Buzelli

The subtlest feat of modern trolling ended in June 2015, when, as so often happens in America, it was taken all the way to the Supreme Court. For enthusiasts, one gratifying form of trolling involves the simple repetition of a deliberate...
AMATEUR HOUR / Spring 2017

The Sky Is Calling

By Jack Hitt ,  Photography by Damon Casarez

On February 14, 2017, Jim Edwards spoke with Jack Hitt as part of the ongoing series “Amateur Hour,” in which various tinkerers, zealots, and collectors discuss their obsessions. Edwards is a retired aerospace engineer with a passionate...
AMATEUR HOUR / Winter 2017

The Circle Is Now Complete

By Jack Hitt ,  Photography by Daniel Terna

On September 30, 2016, Alex Bird joined Jack Hitt onstage at the Institute Library in New Haven, Connecticut, as part of the ongoing series “Amateur Hour,” in which various tinkerers, zealots, and collectors discuss their obsessions. Bird...
AMATEUR HOUR / Fall 2016

Social Justice

By Jack Hitt ,  Photography by Adam Watkins

On August 5, 2016, Tricia Griffith joined Jack Hitt onstage at the Institute Library in New Haven, Connecticut, as part of the ongoing series “Amateur Hour,” in which various tinkerers, zealots, and collectors discuss their obsessions...
AMATEUR HOUR / Winter 2016

Forty Whacks, Forty Winks

By Jack Hitt

Lee-ann Wilber’s Crime-Scene Bed and Breakfast
AMATEUR HOUR / Summer 2015

Boy Wonder

By Jack Hitt ,  Photography by Erika Schultz
AMATEUR HOUR / Spring 2015

One Born Every Minute

By Jack Hitt
Helmand at home in New York, 2015. (Photographs by Kirsten Luce)
AMATEUR HOUR / Fall 2014

If You Print It, They Will Come

By Jack Hitt

On April 1, 2014, Andrew Chastain joined Jack Hitt onstage at the Institute Library in New Haven, Connecticut, as part of the ongoing series “Amateur Hour,” in which various tinkerers, zealots, and collectors discuss their obsessions...

Andrew Chastain
AMATEUR HOUR / Spring 2014

Looper

By Jack Hitt

A conversation with Ronald L. Mallett, a Research Professor of Physics at the University of Connecticut, where he has been developing a theory for time travel.