Mark Levin
Levin speaks at an Americans for Prosperity conference in 2011
Birth name	Mark Reed Levin
Born	(1957-09-21) September 21, 1957 (age 54) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Show	The Mark Levin Show
Station(s)	WABC
Network	Cumulus Media Networks
Time slot	6-9 p.m. EST
Style	Talk radio
Country	United States
Website	marklevinshow.com

Mark Reed Levin (born September 21, 1957) is a lawyer, author and the host of American syndicated radio show The Mark Levin Show. Levin served in the administration of President Ronald Reagan and was a chief of staff for Attorney General Edwin Meese. He is president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, has authored bestselling books and contributes commentary to various media outlets such as National Review Online.^[1]

Biography[link]

Mark Reed Levin was born to a Jewish family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Cheltenham Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Cheltenham High School after three years.^[2][3] After high school, Levin enrolled at Temple University Ambler including summer classes and graduated in 1977 at age 19, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.^[4] He also earned a juris doctorate from Temple University Beasley School of Law in 1980.^[5]

Beginning in 1981, Levin served as advisor to several members of President Ronald Reagan's cabinet, eventually becoming Associate Director of Presidential Personnel and ultimately Chief of Staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese; Levin also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education, and Deputy Solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

He practiced law in the private sector and is president of Landmark Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm founded in 1976 and based in Leesburg, Virginia.

Levin is married to Kendall Levin.^[6] They have two children, Lauren (born 1988) and Chase (born 1991).^[7]

Levin has participated in Freedom Concerts, an annual benefit concert to aid families of fallen soldiers, and he uses his radio program to promote same.^[8][9] Levin is also involved with Troopathon, a charity which sends care packages to soldiers serving overseas.^[10]

In 2001, the American Conservative Union awarded Levin its Ronald Reagan Award.^[11]

Radio broadcasting[link]

Levin began his broadcast career as a guest on conservative talk radio programs. For many years he was a frequent contributor of legal opinions to The Rush Limbaugh Show, where Limbaugh referred to him on-air as "F. Lee Levin," a tongue-in-cheek reference to the famous defense attorney F. Lee Bailey. He was also a contributor to The Sean Hannity Show and eventually got a radio slot of his own on WABC, following Sean Hannity's program. Hannity has nicknamed Mark Levin "The Great One".^[12] Levin and Hannity remain frequent contributors to each other's programs.

Writer[link]

[edit] Men In Black: How The Supreme Court is Destroying America

Levin authored the 2005 book Men In Black: How The Supreme Court Is Destroying America, in which he advanced his thesis that activist judges on the Supreme Court (from all parts of the political spectrum) have "legislated from the bench." In her review of Men in Black, Slate magazine's legal correspondent and journalist Dahlia Lithwick wrote that "no serious scholar of the court or the Constitution, on the ideological left or right, is going to waste their time engaging Levin's arguments once they've read this book."^[13] In contrast, a review in the Defense Counsel Journal described Men in Black as "a forceful indictment of what Levin identifies as an increasingly 'activist' court for amending our national Constitution in the guise of construing it."^[14]

[edit] Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish

In 2007, Levin released a book about his dogs, Pepsi and Sprite. Specifically, the book was about Sprite, a Spaniel mix that his wife and son persuaded him to adopt from the local shelter in 2004. The book was titled Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish. Rescuing Sprite chronicles Sprite’s health deterioration in 2006 and how Levin and his family dealt with their loss.

[edit] Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto was released on March 24, 2009, and became a No. 1 New York Times best seller for eleven of twelve weeks,^[15] as well as No. 1 on Nielsen's BookScan.^[16] It comes in at No. 2 on Amazon.com's list of bestselling books of 2009.^[17] The book includes discussion of a variety of issues that, according to Levin, need to be addressed in the United States. Liberty and Tyranny has sold over one million copies according to Threshold Editions, the book's publisher.^[18] Former federal prosecutor and fellow National Review Online author Andrew C. McCarthy wrote of Liberty and Tyranny in The New Criterion:

We are in the high tide of America’s Leftist ascendancy: the Obama evisceration of individual freedom and installation of authoritarian collectivism—at warp speed, driven by an ambition that would have made Woodrow Wilson and FDR blush. Against this tidal wave, Levin offers not so much a defense as a plan of attack, a clarion call to roll back the seas of Change.^[19]

Taking a contrary view, Steve Almond of Salon wrote that

... the tantalizing beauty of a Mark Levin text resides precisely in this ability to attribute any crisis of State to its nefarious indulgences. The current economic meltdown, for instance, should not be blamed on the psychotic greed of Wall Street, but on the State's deranged need to throw money at the poor and undeserving.^[20]

[edit] Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America

Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America was released January 17, 2012. Amazon's publication notes describe this book as exploring "the psychology, motivations, and history of the utopian movement, its architects, and its modern day disciples – and how the individual and American society are being devoured by it."^[21]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Mark Levin Show, The Official Mark Levin Website
• marklevinshow Twitter feed
• Mark Levin on Facebook
• The Official Mark Levin Show Audio Rewind
• Landmark Legal Foundation
• Mark Levin is on the air from NationalReview.com
• C-SPAN Q&A interview with Levin, October 19, 2008