Mark Stein’s work, which he describes as je ne sais quoi, has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Exposition Review, Wraparound South, Burningword, and other publications. Stein wrote the screenplay for the Steve Martin/Goldie Hawn film Housesitter (Imagine Films/Universal, 1992) and plays produced at Manhattan Theatre Club, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, and elsewhere.
In nonfiction, he is the author of the New York Times bestseller How the States Got Their Shapes (HarperCollins, 2008), which became the basis of a History Channel series by the same name, followed by How the States Got Their Shapes Too: The People behind the Borderlines (Smithsonian Books, 2011), American Panic: A History of Who Scares Us and Why (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Vice Capades: Sex, Drugs, and Bowling from the Pilgrims to the Present (Potomac Books/ University of Nebraska Press, 2017), and The Presidential Fringe: Questing and Jesting for the Oval Office (Potomac Books/University of Nebraska Press, 2020).
Paperback: 66 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (June 19, 2026)