Eric Metaxas is the author of the New York Times #1 Bestseller, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Named “Book of the Year” by the ECPA, Bonhoeffer also won the 2011 John C. Pollock Award for Biography awarded by Beeson Divinity School and a 2011 Christopher Award in the Non-fiction category. Called a “biography of uncommon power,” Bonhoeffer appeared on numerous 2010 “Best of the Year” lists and was featured in the Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, The New Republic, Harper’s, Kirkus (starred review), NPR, FoxNews, C-SPAN’s Book TV, Christianity Today, The Weekly Standard, and First Things. Bonhoeffer has sold more than 700,000 copies and has been translated into 17 languages. It was recently ranked #21 on the Amazon.com listing of Most Highlighted Books of all time.
ABC News has called Metaxas a “photogenic, witty ambassador for faith in public life,” and The Indianapolis Star described him as “a Protestant version of William F. Buckley.”
Metaxas was the keynote speaker at the 2012 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC, an event attended by the President and First Lady, the Vice President, members of Congress, and other U.S. and world leaders. Previous keynote speakers have included Mother Theresa, Bono, and Tony Blair. That speech and Eric’s essay on the experience, were put into a book, No Pressure, Mr. President: The Power of True Belief in a Time of Crisis.
Along with his colleague John Stonestreet, Metaxas is the voice of BreakPoint, a radio commentary that is broadcast on 1,400 radio outlets with an audience of eight million.
In 2011, Metaxas was the 17th recipient of the Canterbury Medal awarded by the Becket Fund for Religious Freedom. Previous medalists include Mitt Romney, Chuck Colson, and Elie Wiesel. He has testified before Congress about the rise of anti-Semitism in the U.S. and abroad, and spoke at CPAC2013 on the issue of Religious Freedom. In September 2013, Eric and his wife Susanne were jointly awarded the Human Life Review’s “Great Defender of Life Award.” In May 2014, Metaxas was awarded honorary Doctorates from Hillsdale College and Liberty University.
Eric’s most recent book (November 2014) Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life hit #12 on the New York Times Best Seller list and is being translated into German, Polish, Greek, Portuguese, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, Estonian, Slovak, Korean, Swedish, Finnish, and Croatian.
His Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God” is unofficially the most popular and shared piece in the history of the Wall Street Journal, garnering over 420,000 Facebook Likes and 8,000 comments.
Metaxas is a Senior Fellow and Lecturer at Large for the King’s College in New York City.
In a decidedly eclectic career, Eric Metaxas has written for VeggieTales, Chuck Colson, and the New York Times, three things not ordinarily found in the same sentence. He is a best-selling author whose biographies, children’s books, and works of popular apologetics have been translated into German, Albanian, Portuguese, Spanish, Korean, Turkish, Galician, French, Simple Chinese, Complex Chinese, Dutch, Danish, Italian, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Ukrainian, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Macedonian, Slovak, and Greek. The Hartford Courant has declared figuring him out “like trying to stick a pushpin in a cyclone.”
Eric Metaxas was born in New York City in 1963, on his father’s 36th birthday. He grew up in Danbury, Connecticut, attending the public schools there, and graduated from Yale University. At Yale he made a literary splash as editor of the Yale Record, the nation’s oldest college humor magazine, and a subsequent literal splash when, following the 99th Yale-Harvard Game, he commandeered a successful effort to throw Harvard’s goalpost into the Charles. At graduation Eric was awarded two senior prizes for his undergraduate fiction. He was also “Class Day Speaker”, co-writing and -delivering “The Class History”, a satirical address that is a Yale commencement tradition, in the process upstaging Dick Cavett, the next speaker. They would not speak for nearly two decades.
Metaxas’ humor writing was first published in the Atlantic Monthly, and has appeared in The New York Times. Woody Allen has called these pieces “quite funny.” Eric’s book and movie reviews, essays, and poetry have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Christianity Today, National Review, and First Things. He has been awarded fellowships to Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony for his short stories. His cult-classic Don’t You Believe It! — a book-length parody of the Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not!” books — led novelist Mark Helprin to dub Metaxas “the true heir to the Far Side’s Gary Larson.”
From 1988-1992, Metaxas was editorial director and head writer for Rabbit Ears Productions, writing over 20 children’s videos and books narrated by such actors as Mel Gibson, Robin Williams, Sir John Gielgud, Danny Glover, Sigourney Weaver, John Candy, Michael Caine, Michael Keaton, Jodie Foster, Emma Thompson, and Raul Julia. His Rabbit Ears videos have won numerous Parent’s Choice Awards and three Grammy nominations for Best Children’s Recording; they all aired on Showtime and as popular audio programs on NPR’s Rabbit Ears Radio, hosted by Mel Gibson and Meg Ryan, whose radio scripts Eric has also written. Parenting magazine and others have called Metaxas “the unsung hero” of Rabbit Ears and a “children’s author nonpareil.”
Mr. Metaxas’ The Birthday ABC was chosen as a 1995 “Pick of the List” by the American Bookseller’s Association. Reviewers said the book’s light verse “sparkled” and “sizzled,” comparing it with Odgen Nash, Edward Lear, and Lewis Carroll. Eric’s many other children’s books include the Angel Award-winning Prince of Egypt A to Z, a tie-in to the Dreamworks film; and the acclaimed Uncle Mugsy & the Terrible Twins of Christmas. Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving was awarded an Amazon.com “Number One Bestseller” Award in 1999.
Eric’s children’s book, It’s Time to Sleep, My Love, illustrated by Nancy Tillman was hailed as a “Goodnight Moon for the 21st century.” Sally Taylor, the daughter of James Taylor and Carly Simon, wrote a lullabye song to Eric’s words, and sings it on the book’s audio cd. The book has sold more than 800,000 copies.
From 1997-1999, Metaxas was a writer and editor for Chuck Colson’s BreakPoint. He then worked as a writer for VeggieTales, where he co-wrote Lyle the Kindly Viking, and provided the voice of the narrator on Esther. In 3-2-1 Penguins! he provided the voice for “President Wait-Your-Turn” and “Vacuum #10?. Eric’s children’s books for VeggieTales include the #1 bestseller God Made You Special! (over 800,000 copies in print), as well as Even Fish Slappers Deserve a Second-Chance and The Pirates Who (Usually) Don’t Do Anything, both also bestsellers. He is the author of the unproduced Gourd of the Baskervilles and an unproduced VeggieBook, The Boy Who Cried Waffle.
Metaxas has been featured as a cultural commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and the Fox News Channel; and has discussed his own books on The History Channel, C-Span’s Book TV, Glenn Beck, and Huckabee. He has been featured on many radio programs, including NPR’s Morning Edition, and Talk of the Nation, as well as Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, Bill Bennett, and The Alan Colmes Show.
He is the founder and host of Socrates in the City: Conversations on the Examined Life, a monthly event of “entertaining and thought-provoking discussions on ‘life, God, and other small topics’” featuring such guests as Malcolm Gladwell, Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel, Dr. Francis Collins, Sir John Polkinghorne, Baroness Caroline Cox, N.T. Wright, Os Guinness, Peter Kreeft, and Dick Cavett.
Metaxas speaks and travels widely. He has spoken in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, Bermuda, Albania, Kosovo, and Greece; and in the U.S. has spoken at the White House, on Capitol Hill, at West Point, Yale, Cornell, Princeton, and at many colleges and universities. In May 2013, Metaxas was the featured speaker at the Canadian National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa. He was the commencement speaker at Palm Beach Atlantic University in 2013. In May 2014 he was the commencement speaker at Hillsdale College and Baccalaureate speaker at Liberty University.
He has debated at the Oxford Union, the world’s oldest debating society. His no-holds-barred introductions of such figures as U. S. Senator Joseph Lieberman, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, and Rick Warren have made him much sought after as an emcee and moderator. Metaxas has moderated debates featuring President Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright; Bishop John Spong; Princeton’s Peter Singer; Dinesh D’Souza, and the New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman.
Seven Men and the Secret of their Greatness is published by Thomas Nelson and has been a NY Times Bestseller; a sequel, titled Seven Women, is due out in 2015.
Eric’s biography, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery was published by HarperOne, and was the “official companion book” to the feature film, also titled Amazing Grace. The book appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, and was lauded by Stanley Crouch (“…a superb history of the British fight against slavery”; Former NYC Congressman Floyd Flake (“magnificent… will stand as a living landmark…”); John Wilson (“a crackling bonfire of clarity and truth.”); Rudy Giuliani (“better than the movie!”), and many others.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (but were afraid to ask), came out in 2005, and was praised by Ann B. Davis, Alice on The Brady Bunch (“I am absolutely smitten with this book!”), Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (“The difficulty is not to gush.”) and Dick Cavett (“Metaxas deserves a prize.”). The sequel, titled Everything ELSE You Always Wanted to Know About God (but were afraid to ask) was published in 2007. A third book in the series titled Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (The Jesus Edition) was published in hardcover by Regal in January 2010.
Eric lives in Manhattan, New York, with his wife and daughter.
