Tom Lutz is the author of Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America; Cosmopolitan Vistas, Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears; and American Nervousness, 1903: An Anecdotal History. He is the editor of The Los Angeles Review of Books. He also teaches writing, literature, and theory at UC Riverside in the departments of Creative Writing (which he chairs) and Media and Cultural Studies.