A pathogen is causing a crisis in America because the government’s supply of the medicine to control it has been depleted. The country’s leaders are barely working together to remedy the situation in “The Rationing: a Novel,” a just-released political satire by Northbrook native Charles Wheelan.
Wheelan was back in his hometown recently on May 19 for a book release party at the Book Bin.
The novel is a departure from the usual work by the Dartmouth public policy and economics professor, who is the author of acclaimed nonfiction books, including: “Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science,” “Introduction to Public Policy,” “The Centrist Manifesto,” “Naked Money: A Revealing Look at our Financial System,” and “Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data,” among other books.
Spend some time with Wheelan and this doesn’t seem like such a departure after all. He is a man of many talents and wide-ranging interests.
“I tried to take a gap year after Glenbrook North High School,” Wheelan said. “It wasn’t called a gap year then but I wanted to take a year off before college and travel. The principal, E. J. Duffy, said, ‘Why don’t you do it after college?’”
Heeding that advice, Wheelan headed to Dartmouth where he studied the Middle East.
“I did some foreign study programs,” he said. “I studied in Kuwait, I studied in France, I worked in London.”
After graduating, Wheelan took his gap year with his then-girlfriend who is now his wife.
“We came back to Chicago, worked from June to October until we had enough money, and then we took off and went around the world for nine months. When you go around the world, you become interested in public policy,” Wheelan said.
While they traveled, Wheelan worked as a journalist.
“I made a deal with the Valley News, which is still a thriving local newspaper in the Hanover area (New Hampshire), that I would be their roving foreign correspondent,” he said. “The things I wound up writing about I would describe as public policy.”
When he returned, Wheelan became a speechwriter for Maine’s then-Governor John R. McKernan Jr.
“That was my front row seat to politics,” Wheelan said.
That vantage point played a part in “The Rationing,” the author indicated.
“The protagonist in the book is a scientist kind of thrust into the scene and he’s over his head,” Wheelan said. “He’s kind of a political naïve but he suddenly has this front row seat where everything’s happening.”
He next headed to graduate school, earning a master’s degree in public policy at Princeton University, followed by a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He then became a Midwest correspondent for “The Economist.”
“I was one of the first to write about the meth/amphetamine problem,” he noted.
Wheelan spent five years at “The Economist” before leaving to work for a couple of years at Chicago Metropolis 2020.
“That’s kind of a think and do tank around transportation policy, tax policy, etc.,” he said.
Wheelan taught at the University of Chicago from 2004-2012, serving as a senior lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy. In 2012, he joined the Dartmouth faculty where he is a senior lecturer and policy fellow. His family relocated to New Hampshire.
Throughout his teaching career, Wheelan has been writing in his attempt to make serious topics understandable to a wide range of readers. He has had the same publisher throughout the career and, until his new work of fiction, he also has always had the same editor.
Wheelan has also always traveled.
“I created a class at the University of Chicago where I would travel with students to some interesting place,” he said.
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These included India, Brazil, Rwanda and Madagascar.
His wife and three children joined these trips whenever possible.
“My daughters went to India when they were 5 and 3,” Wheelan said.
In 2016, he, his wife and their three teenagers traveled the world for nine months.
That’s when Wheelan began writing “The Rationing” every morning because he awoke before the rest of the family and didn’t have a nonfiction project.
The author continues to teach as he works on a couple of nonfiction projects but he has high hopes for “The Rationing.”
“I want the book to do well enough that I can keep writing fiction,” he said. “I definitely have the fiction bug.”