About Charles Wheelan
Charles Wheelan is a senior lecturer and policy fellow at the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College. He joined the Dartmouth faculty full-time in June of 2012. He has been selected as one of Dartmouth’s ten best professors by three different graduating classes. He teaches courses on education policy, health care, tax policy, income inequality, and related topics. Check out his website right here.
Charles Wheelan teaches the Practicum in Global Policy Leadership in which he travels with students to examine an international policy topic. In years past, the class has visited India, Israel, Jordan, Liberia, Turkey, Rwanda, Madagascar, Northern Ireland, Brazil, Liberia, and Colombia.
From 2004 to 2012, Charles Wheelan was a senior lecturer in public policy at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He taught several courses on understanding the policy process for Master’s students. For the 2004-05 academic year, he was voted Professor of the Year in a Non-Core Course by the Harris School student body.
Some of Charles Wheelan’s books include Naked Money: What It Is and Why It Matters. He is also the author of The Centrist Manifesto and the founder and co-chair of Unite America, an organization dedicated to bridging the partisan divide and electing a more representative and functional government.
In 2013, Charles Wheelan published Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data. Shortly after publication, the book reached the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover nonfiction. The New York Times called the book “sparkling and intensely readable.” The same year, he published The Centrist Manifesto, which calls for a new political party “of the middle.”
In March of 2009, Charles Wheelan ran unsuccessfully for Congress as the representative from the Illinois 5th District. In its editorial assessing the race, the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “Voters will find a ballot filled with impressive and thoughtful candidates . . . especially Charlie Wheelan, a University of Chicago lecturer who combines a razor-sharp mind with a boatload of charm and impressive expertise in economics and foreign policy. We expect great things from Charles Wheelan in the future.”
Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Chicago, Charles Wheelan was Director of Policy and Communications for Chicago Metropolis 2020, a business-backed civic group promoting healthy regional growth in the Chicago area.
From 1997 to 2002, Charles Wheelan was the Midwest correspondent for The Economist. His story on America’s burgeoning ex-convict population was the August 10, 2002, cover story. He has written freelance articles for the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications.
Charles Wheelan’s first book, Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science, an accessible and entertaining introduction to economics for lay readers, is now published in 14 languages, including Arabic and Hebrew. The Chicago Tribune described Naked Economics as “clear, concise, informative and (gasp) witty.”
Charles Wheelan’s first novel, The Rationing, was published in 2019.
Wheelan holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Chicago, a Master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton University, and a B.A. from Dartmouth College. He lives in Hanover, New Hampshire.
We Came, We Saw, We Left: A Family Gap Year
Charlie Wheelan and his family do what others dream of: They take a year off to travel the world. This is their story.
What would happen if you quit your life for a year? In a pre–COVID-19 world, the Wheelan family decided to find out; leaving behind work, school, and even the family dogs to travel the world on a modest budget. Equal parts “how-to” and “how-not-to”―and with an eye toward a world emerging from a pandemic―We Came, We Saw, We Left is the insightful and often hilarious account of one family’s gap-year experiment.
Wheelan paints a picture of adventure and connectivity, juggling themes of local politics, global economics, and family dynamics while exploring answers to questions like: How do you sneak out of a Peruvian town that has been barricaded by the local army? And where can you get treatment for a flesh-eating bacteria your daughter picked up two continents ago? From Colombia to Cambodia, We Came, We Saw, We Left chronicles nine months across six continents with three teenagers. What could go wrong? 19 black-and-white maps and 17 photographs
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