His grandfather drove a bulldozer, and his father drove a garbage truck.

Like both of them, his name is Harry Bruinius, and he grew up in the blue-collar neighborhoods of Chicago's south side. He, too, used to shovel concrete, carry a 22-ounce hammer, and help construct the foundations for modest suburban homes.

But this third-generation Bruinius eventually hung up his tool belt and moved to New York City to be a writer.

Now living in Manhattan, Harry is an award-winning freelance journalist whose first book, Better For All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2006 and Vintage in 2007. This book was a finalist for the 2002 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, placed on Booklist "Editor's Choice 2006", and named one of New York Public Library's "25 Books to Remember from 2006."

Harry contributes regularly to The Christian Science Monitor, and during his spare time, he also moonlights as a professor of journalism at Hunter College, where he teaches Basic Newswriting, Journalism as Literature, Magazine Writing, and Journalism & Society.

But the road from Chicago concrete worker to Manhattan writer included a brief stint as a wannabe theologian. Steeped in religion, Harry grew up in a temperate, conservative home, where his family had always tried to protect him from the vicissitudes of wanton thrills. It didn't always work, however, and since he was a boy, Harry has often dived headlong into his life, sometimes backwards and without looking first.

In a similar way, Harry went to Yale University to train to be a professor of theology. Though he graduated first in his class, receiving the Julia A. Archibald High Scholarship Prize, he decided to leave the dark, dank halls of academia and search for a place a bit more dangerous and intellectually stimulating.

Today, from the streets of Harlem to the eugenics archives of the American Philosophical Society, Harry hopes to follow the blue-collar journalistic traditions of writers like Joseph Mitchell and J. Anthony Lukas, as well as the gonzo intellectual reportage of Ron Rosenbaum and Hunter S. Thompson.

Harry's book Better For All the World is a narrative history of the eugenics movement in the United States, tracing the lives of the victims of forced sterilization and the men and women who pioneered history's first program of genetic engineering.

His articles for The Christian Science Monitor cover everything from sports and politics to business and culture. He's been contributing since 1999.

When he's not researching or writing, Harry can be found running laps around the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park, playing basketball at the McBurney YMCA, or drinking martinis somewhere in the East Village.