Jerry Hagstrom is a journalist, book author, and commentator on American government and political life. Mr. Hagstrom has been a contributing editor of National Journal, the Washington weekly on government and national politics, since 1976. He is the co-author with Neal R. Peirce of The Book of America: Inside Fifty States Today and the author of Beyond Reagan: The New Landscape of American Politics. Since 1995, Mr. Hagstrom has covered agricultural policy for National Journal and other publications. Mr. Hagstrom was born in North Dakota, where he grew up on a farm homestaeaded by his Swedish immigrant grandparents. He is a graduate of the University of Denver and has been a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University and a research fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University.