Ethan Brown

Ethan Brown has written for New York, The New York Observer, Wired, Vibe, Radar, The Independent, GQ, Mother Jones, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Men’s Vogue, Entertainment Weekly, Details and The Village Voice. He has appeared on NPR, WNYC, Court TV, MSNBC, Hot 97, TPMCafe and BET to discuss drug policy, street crime, the music business and other issues.

Ethan’s third book—Shake the Devil Off—was published in the fall of 2009. Evan Wright, author of the New York Times bestseller Generation Kill, called Shake the Devil Off as “a chilling portrait of a broken hero failed by the system.” George Pelecanos, New York Times bestselling author of The Turnaround, said that “Ethan Brown examines a notorious murder case, rescues it from the talons of tabloid journalists, and comes up with something much more than a true crime book.  Shake the Devil Off is a gripping suspense story, an indictment of the military’s treatment of our soldiers in and out of war, and a celebration of the resilience and worth of a great American city.”    Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, urged “every military general and every VA leader to read this book to understand how hubris and incompetence in government often leads to massive pain, suffering, and preventable death.  Defense Secretary Robert Gates and VA Secretary Eric Shinseki should put Shake the Devil Off at the top of their reading list as a superbly written account of how everything could and did go wrong for a soldier and his family during and after war.” In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called Shake the Devil Off “heartbreaking” and Nate Blakeslee, author of Tulia, hailed the book as “a ‘coming home’ story that rivals any written about veterans of the war in Iraq, and a true crime account that raises the bar for the genre. Measured, thoroughly reported, and written with true empathy.” David Simon, creator of The Wire and author of Homicide and The Corner, said that “looking more deeply at that from which the rest of us turned in horror, Ethan Brown has transformed an ugly and disturbing shard of the post-Katrina anguish. In this book, that which was lurid and sensational becomes, chapter by chapter, something genuinely sad and reflective, something that now has true meaning for New Orleans and for all of us.” In September of 2009, Shake The Devil Off was chosen as a “Critics’ Pick” in the Washington Post and an “Editors’ Choice” by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.