Daniel Okrent

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, for inventing Rotisserie League Baseball, and for writing several books, most recently Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, which 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.

Okrent and Peter Gethers, having acquired the theatrical rights to the site and name of the web series Old Jews Telling Jokes, co-wrote and co-produced a revue of that name. It opened at the Westside Theatre in Manhattan on May 20, 2012.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Okrent graduated from Cass Technical High School in Detroit in 1965 and from the University of Michigan, where he worked on the university's student newspaper The Michigan Daily.

Most of his career has been spent as an editor, at such places as Alfred A. Knopf; Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich; Esquire Magazine; New England Monthly; Life Magazine; and Time, Inc.

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