Jim Cullen attended Tufts University and holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Brown University. He taught at Harvard, Brown, and Sarah Lawrence College before settling down for 19 years at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, where he served as chair of the History Department and as a member of the Board of Trustees. Since 2020, he has been a member of the faculty at the recently founded Greenwich Country Day high school in Connecticut. Jim is the author of over twenty books, including The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation (2003), Bridge & Tunnel Boys: Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, and the Metropolitan Sound of the American Century (2023) and Born in the U.S.A.

: Bruce Springsteen in American Life (third edition, 2024). His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Time, Rolling Stone, Newsday, (New York) Daily News, CNN.com , Forbes, the American Historical Review, the Journal of American History, and other publications. Jim lives with his wife, Sarah Lawrence College historian Lyde Cullen Sizer, in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.