John Tierney

John Tierney is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor to City Journal. Tierney has significant experience in print and media, recently joining City Journal after more than two decades as a reporter and columnist with the New York Times.

Tierney won the New York State Publishers Association Award for his column on urban politics, economics, and culture, “The Big City,” which appeared in the New York Times Magazine and in the paper’s Metro section. He has also written columns in the Times about national politics and science.

Prior to joining the Times, Tierney was a contributing editor to Discover and Health magazines, a staff writer at Science 81-85 magazine, a reporter for the Washington Star and the Bergen Record, and a freelance writer whose  reporting took him to all seven continents. His work has been widely published, including in The Atlantic, Esquire, New York, Reader’s Digest, Vogue, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.

Tierney’s latest book is The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules and How We Can Rule It (Penguin Press, 2019), co-authored with Roy F. Baumeister. He also contributed an essay on Covid to Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order (Bombardier Books, 2022). Previously, Tierney co-authored the New York Times best-seller Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (Penguin Press, 2011). Willpower tells the story of scientists’ rediscovery of willpower and its implications outside the laboratory and has been translated into 20 languages.