Bruce Fingerhut was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in the Maryland suburbs. He studied philosophy and international relations for his A.B. and M.A. at the University of Maryland, and political theory under the tutelage of Gerhart Niemeyer at Notre Dame, though he never finished his Ph.D. and therefore is saved from being hit up for dough every year from Our Lady’s University. For most of his life after school he has worked in the field of book publishing, as editor and then publisher of several companies. In 1996 he founded St. Augustine’s Press, a scholarly house specializing in philosophy, theology, and cultural history. The smartest thing he ever did was to court and marry the former Laila Pedersen, a Norwegian national, though this may well be the dumbest thing she ever did. They share four children and seven grandchildren.