I’m a historian of American law and politics, and I’m an Associate Professor of History at American University in Washington, D.C. You can contact me at grao at American dot edu.

My most recent book is White Power: Policing American Slavery (forthcoming, 2026). This book is a history of the laws that enslavers used to police enslaved people from 1619 until the Civil War and their sad legacies in American life.

I’m also working on a book about the television show, The West Wing. This book will take readers back to the 1980s and 90s to capture some of the personalities, people and historical events that the show repackaged as entertainment. This book is a product of my class at American University, “The West Wing as History.”

My first book, National Duties: Custom Houses and the Making of the American State was published in 2016 by The University of Chicago Press. It tells the story of how the Founders created the federal government after the American Revolution.

I was born and raised in New York, but I went to college and grad school at the University of Chicago (go Maroons!). I live in the DC area with my spouse and kids. We also have two cats, Rollie Fingers (the tuxedo) and Stevie G. (the muted calico).

When I’m not writing, teaching, or researching, I’m rooting for my favorite sports teams—The New York Mets (#LGM), Liverpool Football Club (#YNWA), the New York Knicks—or cooking.

Representation: Dani Segelbaum, Arc Literary