Margolick graduated from the
Loomis Chaffee School in 1970 and graduated from the
University of Michigan with a B.A. and
Stanford Law School with a
J.D. degree. He is the author of
Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns, a biography of the controversial American author
John Horne Burns. Margolick is also the author of
Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock, a study of the principal figures in the iconic photograph from
the 1957 school desegregation crisis and published in October 2011 by Yale University Press. In July 2011 his long-form article
A Predator Priest, about a family's long quest to bring a pedophile priest from Margolick's hometown of
Putnam, Connecticut, to justice was posted on
Kindle Singles. An article he authored for
The New York Times on the Community Concert series includes significant discussion of his mother's work for the program and photos he took of classical music performers who came to
Putnam, Connecticut, as a child. His prior books include
Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink, published by Knopf in 2005;
Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song (2001);
At the Bar: The Passions and Peccadillos of American Lawyers (1995); and
Undue Influence: The Epic Battle for the Johnson & Johnson Fortune (1994).
Strange Fruit won a 2001
Firecracker Alternative Book Award. In 2025 Margolick published
When Caesar Was King, subtitled
How Sid Caesar Reinvented American Comedy, a book on
Sid Caesar’s
Your Show of Shows for
Nextbook’s Jewish Encounters Series (Schocken/Random House). He has been an adjunct professor in
New York University’s Department of Journalism and lives in
New York City and
Sag Harbor. ==Bibliography==