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 2025.

Mann is interested in late 19th- and early 20th-century literature and history, especially where they intersect with politics and the absurd. He is also a cartoonist, whose syndicated online weekly feature "The Quixote Syndrome" ran on GoComics from 2014-2021. Currently, he puts out comics on his Substack newsletter "Free Spirits Run Riot."

Mann teaches the first-year Foundations sequence of Stanford's Masters 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. Mann also regularly teaches courses in Stanford Continuing Studies, including: "Modernism in the Metropolis: Artist 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

Professional Education

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