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Portrait of Sam Roberts

Sam Roberts

I research and write mini-biographies, usually on deadline, about the lives — not the deaths — of remarkable people, most of whom I wish I had met before they passed. I’m insatiably curious about how and why things happen, how power is won and wielded, and about the “Rosebud” moments that define the trajectories in people’s lives.

I’ve covered urban affairs in New York as a reporter, columnist, domestic correspondent and editor for The Times and The New York Daily News for more than 50 years. I’ve also hosted “The New York Times Close Up,” first on NY1 News and now on CUNY-TV, since it began in 1992. I’m the author of a dozen nonfiction books, including “The New Yorkers: 31 Remarkable People, 400 Years, and the Untold Biography of the World’s Greatest City;” “A History of New York in 101 Objects;” and “The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Atom Spy Case.” I was born in Brooklyn and graduated from Cornell University.

All Times journalists are committed to upholding the standards of integrity outlined in our Ethical Journalism Handbook. The best compliment I was paid as a young reporter was by a public official I respected who said I had a healthy irreverence for everyone. Our responsibility is, without fear or favor — or sanctimony — to hold people with power accountable and to monitor how the exercise of that power impacts people without any.

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