Dash was born in
London. He attended
Peterhouse, Cambridge, a college particularly noted for teaching
history, and completed postgraduate work at
King's College London, where he obtained a Ph.D. Dash authored a series of books covering incidents in the history of the
Dutch East India Company, the
Netherlands,
India under British rule, and
New York during the
Progressive Era. Each focuses on a single event or series of events, among them the wreck of the East Indiaman
Batavia, the Dutch
tulip mania of 1634–1637, and the early years of the
American Mafia. He has written for a history
blog, "Past Imperfect", published by
Smithsonian Magazine. In 2014, his blog post on the
Lykov family, "Lost in the Taiga," was named one of "Nearly 100 Fantastic Pieces of Journalism" by
The Atlantic. Dash's 2009 book,
The First Family, is a new history of
Giuseppe Morello and the establishment of
the Mafia in the
United States. He began writing for the Smithsonian in July 2011 when the Institution acquired his history site, "A Blast from the Past", shortly after the
History News Network awarded it the 2010 Cliopatria prize for history blogging. In addition to blogging, Dash regularly contributes to
r/AskHistorians, and since January 2019 he has republished material written for AskHistorians on his personal blog's "Ask Mike" page. ==Bibliography==