Her work focuses on how the social and cultural dimensions of Washington reporting during and after World War II created the appearance of foreign policy consensus in the early Cold War period. She earned her Ph.D. in history from Princeton University, an M.S. from the Columbia Journalism School, and a B.A. in history from Stanford. Her first book was a political biography of the Washington power broker Bob Strauss, The Whole Damn Deal: Robert Strauss and the Art of Politics (Public Affairs, 2011).