About Me

Zachary M. Schrag was born in New York City in 1970. In 1977, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he attended Georgetown Day School, graduating in 1988. From there he went to Harvard, where he graduated in 1992.

In 1996 Zach entered the doctoral program in history at Columbia University, where he studied with Elizabeth Blackmar, Alan Brinkley, Ronald Grele, and Kenneth Jackson. He received his PhD in 2002. His dissertation received the Society for American City and Regional Planning History's 2003 John Reps Prize for the best dissertation in the field completed in the previous two years.

Zach's book, The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), examines the politics, planning, engineering, architecture, finance, and operations of the nation's second-largest rail transit system, arguing that Metro is best understood as the concrete manifestation of Great Society ideals. He is currently working on two books: one on institutional review boards, the other on the role of the National Guard in urban riots.

Zach's has had articles published or accepted by The Journal of Policy History, The Journal of Urban History, Technology and Culture, and Washington History, and his essays have appeared in AHA Perspectives, TR News, and the Washington Post. He has received grants and fellowships from Columbia University, George Mason University, the National Science Foundation, the Gerald Ford Foundation, and the Library of Congress. He has taught at George Washington University, Baruch College, and Columbia University. In August 2004, he joined the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University as an assistant professor of history.

He is married to the beautiful Professor Rebecca Tushnet of the Georgetown University Law Center. They live in Arlington, Virginia, with their children, Leonard and Nora, and their cat.