Ken Ackerman, a writer and attorney in Washington, D.C. since the 1970s, is a long-time veteran of senior positions both in government and private law.
As a writer, Ken has authored five major books on Americana:
- Boss Tweed: The Corrupt Pol who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York,
- Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield,
- Young J. Edgar: Hoover and the Red Scare,1919-1920,
- The Gold Ring: Jim Fisk, Jay Gould, and Black Friday 1869, and
- Trotsky in New York, 1917: A Radical on the Eve of revolution, his newest, set for release in September 2016.
Click here for a full publication list. He has recently expanded his writing to include his history blog, Viral History, and a small publishing house, Viral History Press LLC
When not writing, Ken currently practices law in Washington at Olsson Frank Weeda Terman Matz PC (OFW Law) specializing in agriculture risk management. Along the way, he served as legal counsel to two committees of the United States Senate: Governmental Affairs (1975-1981) under then-Senator Charles H. Percy (R-Ill.), and Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry (1988-1993) under its then-Chairmen Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). During the administration of President Bill Clinton, he headed the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (1993-2001). Earlier, he held various legal positions at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
During this varied career, Ken has testified before dozens of Congressional hearings, investigated issues ranging from the 1979-80 silver corner to the 1987 stock crash, and developed legislation on topics from budget reconciliation to farm policy to electronic eavesdropping to civil service reform to financial market oversight. He has appeared often before Congress, the media, and public groups, including farmer town meetings in over 20 States and government officials in London, Warsaw, Vienna, Tel Aviv, and Ramallah, PNA.
Ken was profiled in Government Executive magazine in 1997 and included by National Journal that year in its “Washington 100” list of top Federal decision-makers. He teaches seminars for TheCapitol.Net and The Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and serves on boards both of the Writers Center and the Washington Independent Review of Books in Washington, D.C. He enjoys scuba diving and is a PADI certified divermaster.
A native of Albany, New York, and a graduate of Brown University (1973) and the Georgetown University Law Center (1976), Ken lives with his wife Karen in Falls Church, Virginia.