Josh Mensch is the coauthor of three critically acclaimed books about American history: the New York Times #4 nonfiction bestseller The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill (Flatiron Books, 2023); the New York Times #6 nonfiction bestseller The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America’s 16thPresident—and Why it Failed (Flatiron Books, 2020); and the New York Times #2 bestseller The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington(Flatiron Books, 2019). All three were cowritten with award-winning author Brad Meltzer.
In addition to writing books, Josh has been a documentary television showrunner, writer, director, and producer. He has created a wide variety of historical, cultural, and journalistic programming for nonfiction networks including the History Channel, PBS, National Geographic, Discovery and others.
Remarkably, two television stories that Josh wrote and directed led to the recovery of significant artifacts from American history: the iconic flag raised by firefighters at Ground Zero on 9/11 (as featured on Lost History, for the History Channel), and the electric guitar played by Bob Dylan when he famously “plugged in” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 (as featured on History Detectives, on PBS). Also in the realm of American history, Josh has written and produced stories about subjects ranging from World War II battles, to the Hatfields & McCoys, to the early days of jazz, to the buildup to the Iraq War, to the history of superheroes.
Josh’s television credits as a showrunner, writer, director, or producer include: Superheroes Decoded (History Channel), Generation X (National Geographic), Lost History (History Channel), Frontline (PBS), History Detectives (PBS), Border Wars (Nat Geo), True Life (MTV), and others. In the course of his projects, Josh has conducted interviews with many famous and/or fascinating figures including senators, actors, film directors, historians, political activists, fashion designers and the occasional astrophysicist.
Josh grew up mostly in Buffalo, New York. He is a graduate of Princeton University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his filmmaker wife and their two children.
