Clay Risen

Clay Risen is a staff editor at the New York Times op-ed page, where he oversees “Disunion,” the paper’s online series about the Civil War. He is the author of American Whiskey, Bourbon and Rye: A Guide to the Nation’s Favorite Spirit, The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act, and A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination. He lives in New York City.

Ten Things I Can’t Do Without

1. Chopin’s Nocturnes by Vladimir Ashkenazy
2. Black coffee from the NY Times cafe
3. Johnny Drum 4-Year-Old Bourbon
4. The travel writing of Patrick Leigh Fermor
5. My daughter singing “The Wheels on the Bus”
6. Ft. Greene Park, in Brooklyn
7. Days of Heaven
8. Thomas Mann, above all Buddenbrooks
9. Fried catfish
10. 0.5 mm black pens from Muji