Daniel Okrent (born April 2, 1948) is an American writer and editor. He is best known for having served as the first public editor of The New York Times newspaper, inventing Rotisserie League Baseball, and for writing several history books. (His Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition served as a major source for the 2011 Ken Burns/Lynn Novick miniseries Prohibition). In November 2011, Last Call won the Albert J. Beveridge prize, awarded by the American Historical Association to the year's best book of American history. In 2019, he published The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America. His most recent book is Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn't Easy (2026).
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Early life and education
Born to a Jewish family in Detroit, Michigan, Okrent graduated from Cass Technical High School in Detroit in 1965. He earned a BA degree from the University of Michigan, where he says he mostly worked on the university's student newspaper The Michigan Daily.
