Steven Attewell was an author, policy historian, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Public Policy at CUNY's Murphy Institute for Labor Studies. [1] He was best known for his blog Race for the Iron Throne, [2] [3] which covered the historical and political side of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO's Game of Thrones , for which he published several books on the series. [4] [5] [6]
Attewell started off as an undergraduate history major at Columbia and then went into the history PhD program at UC Santa Barbara, [7] where he wrote his dissertation Public At Work: Direct Job Creation Policy From The New Deal to the Rise of Reagan. [8] This became his book People Must Live by Work, which traces "the rise and fall of direct job creation by the government as federal economic and social policy." [9] People Must Live by Work has been cited by other works, such as Eric Rauchway's Why the New Deal Matters [10] and Kate Aronoff's Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet--And How We Fight Back. [11]
From 2009 to 2013, he worked as a freelance policy analyst for the New America Foundation. [12] He received the Patricia and John Klingenstein Short-Term Fellowship from the New York Historical Society in 2014 for his project "The Tammany Tiger in an Era of Mass Unemployment." [13] Starting in 2014, he began working as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at CUNY's Murphy Institute for Labor Studies, [14] where he taught Urban Studies. [1]
In March 2012, he began writing the blog Race for the Iron Throne, which was dedicated to doing a chapter-by-chapter analysis of A Song of Ice and Fire and an episode-by-episode analysis of Game of Thrones. [15] He also wrote frequent guest essays for the blog Tower of the Hand [16] [17] and for the blogs Lawyers, Guns & Money [18] and Graphic Policy, where he wrote a series of articles titled "The People's History of the Marvel Universe" [19] [20] [21] and co-hosted an episode-by-episode podcast about The Venture Bros. [22] He also co-founded The Realignment Project, a group blog dedicated to discussing "current political events, political strategy, ideology, and history." [23]
In 2014, he wrote articles about Game of Thrones for Esquire, [24] including ones comparing the characters to their historical counterparts [25] and discussing the controversal rape scene in "Breaker of Chains," [26] and in 2015, he wrote articles about the fifth season of Game of Thrones for Salon.com. [4]
In October 2024, journalist and author Spencer Ackerman confirmed that he included Steven in his first issue of Iron Man as a tribute. [27]
Attewell's parents are Katherine S. Newman and Paul Attewell and he has one brother, David Attewell. [28] [29] Attewell dealt with cancer on-and-off for years and lost a leg to it. He died of complications due to the cancer in April 2024. [30] [31]
One of his ancestors, Adam Attewell, had joined John Ball's Great Society and was executed for rebellion against the crown. [32] [33]