Peter Mann

Bio

Peter Mann is a writer and historian of Modern Europe. He is the author of the novel THE TORQUED MAN (Harper, 2022), about the double life of an Irish spy in wartime Berlin, and named one of The New Yorker's Best Books of 2022. His second novel WORLD PACIFIC is forthcoming from HarperCollins in August, 2025.

Mann is interested in 19th- and 20th-century literature and history, especially where they intersect with politics and the absurd. He is also a cartoonist, with work featured in The Baffler, Brick, and GoComics, and currently publishes comics on his Substack newsletter "The Quixote Syndrome."

At Stanford Mann teaches the first-year Foundations sequence of the Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) program, a syllabus in literature, history, and art, with readings that span the ancient epic to the contemporary novel. Before coming to the MLA, he taught for several years in Stanford's residential freshman humanities program, Structured Liberal Education. He also regularly teaches courses in Stanford Continuing Studies, including: "Modernism in the Metropolis: Artists and Intellectuals in the European City, 1848-1945" and "Modernity and its Discontents: European Thought and Culture from Fin de Siècle to World War II."

Academic Appointments

• Lecturer, Master of Liberal Arts Program
• Lecturer, Stanford Introductory Studies

Professional Education

• BA, Wesleyan University, History (2003)
• PhD, Stanford University, History and Humanities (2012)