Jacob Soll is professor of history and accounting at the University of Southern California. He received a B.A. from the University of Iowa, a D.E.A. from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France, and a Ph.D. from Magdalene College, Cambridge University. He has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes including the Jacques Barzun Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and, in 2011, the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. He is the author of Publishing “The Prince” (2005), winner of the Jacques Barzun Prize from the American Philosophical Society; The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Secret State Information System (2009), and The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations (2014), which has sold more than 40,000 copies worldwide. Soll is a correspondent for the Boston Globe, a staff writer for Politico and a regular contributor to the New York Times, the New Republic, PBS, Salon.com and the Chronicle of Higher Education.