John Derbyshire

John Derbyshire, born in England in 1945 and a US citizen since 2002, has been publishing cultural and political commentary for outlets on both sides of the Atlantic since 1983. Before taking up full-time writing in 2001, he held day jobs as a software developer.

His 1996 novel Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The Mathematical Association of America awarded the Euler Book Prize to his 2003 nonfiction book Prime Obsession and praised Unknown Quantity, his 2007 history of algebra, as "an engaging account." We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism (2009) was described by Time as "a guiltily enjoyable diatribe" and by The Wall Street Journal as "sardonic and sometimes very funny."

Derbyshire's weekly Radio Derb probably (he believes) holds the record for Dissident Right podcasts: one thousand editions from the first in May 2004 until the last in June 2025. Now retired and living on Long Island, Derbyshire supplies a monthly column to Chronicles and occasional book reviews there and elsewhere.