His book subjects have included the Philadelphia Zoo, his family history, Alexander Hamilton's duel with Aaron Burr, railroad companies competing to link up with the western United States, wealthy children, and the Cherokee Nation.

Since then Sedgwick has served as an editor at Newsweek and at Self Care, and has frequently published essays and stories in numerous magazines, including The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Esquire, GQ, and many others.

Sedgwick's forthcoming work of literary nonfiction, From the River to the Sea: The Untold Story of the Railroad War That Made the West tells the story of competition between the Rio Grande and Santa Fe railroads as they charted paths across largely undeveloped lands of the Old American West.

[4] Sedgwick is best known for his family memoir, In My Blood: Six Generations of Madness and Desire in an American Family and his co-biography, War of Two: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and the Duel that Stunned the Nation, which won the Society of Cincinnati Prize and was a finalist for the George Washington Prize.

[9] He is now married to Financial Times columnist, CNN analyst, and author Rana Foroohar.