[3] Walter Elliot Shapiro was born in Manhattan, New York City, in 1947, raised in Norwalk, Connecticut,[2] and graduated from Brien McMahon High School in 1965.
[2] Shapiro also started a master's at Michigan in European history; as a graduate student in 1972, he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives, finishing second in a six-way Democratic primary election.
[9] Shapiro won the Society of Professional Journalists' 2010 Sigma Delta Chi Award in the category of Online Column Writing (Independent) for his piece "The Societal Costs of Our Shrill, Hyperactive and Partisan Media Culture," published in Politics Daily.
[8] Shapiro wrote One-Car Caravan: On the Road with the 2004 Democrats Before America Tunes In (PublicAffairs, 2003) and Hustling Hitler: How a Jewish Vaudevillian Fooled the Fuhrer (Blue Rider Press, 2016).
[14] Shapiro was married to magazine writer Meryl Gordon and split his time between New York City and Washington, D.C.[2] He died from complications of cancer at a hospital in Manhattan on July 21, 2024, aged 77.