Gordon writes on the history of American public policy and political economy.  He is the author of Citizen Brown: Race, Democracy, and Inequality in the St. Louis Suburbs (Chicago, in press); Growing Apart: A Political History of American Inequality (Institute for Policy Studies, 2013); Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Dead on Arrival: The Politics of Health in Twentieth Century America (Princeton University Press, 2003), and New Deals: Business, Labor and Politics, 1920-1935 (Cambridge University Press, 1994).  He has written for the Nation, In these Times, Z Magazine, Atlantic Cities, and Dissent (to which he is a regular contributor). His digital projects include Mapping Decline, an interactive mapping project based on his St. Louis research; and Digital Johnson County, a mapping collaboration with the UI Libraries, the Office of State Archeologist, the Department of Natural Resources, and the State Historical Society of Iowa. He is a senior research consultant at the Iowa Policy Project, for which he has written or co-written reports on health coverage, economic development, and wages and working conditions (including the biennial State of Working Iowa series).

Gordon received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1990. His web page is https://colin-gordon.sites.uiowa.edu/