with John Avlon: Extremist Beat", which will track the rise of extremist groups in America. Avlon hopes the series can contextualize the history and development of these types of movements within American history saying, "At the end of the day, a lot of these things riff off older conspiracies. And I think by pulling out and drawing those connections, people can all of a sudden have perspective on what they may have been sucked into," explaining "we add that additional layer that I think is a lot more than what you get just by the daily thrust and parry of the news and chronicling the crazy." Writing Avlon has written numerous articles and essays. He wrote the Newsweek cover-story: "A 21st Century Statesman," (February 28, 2011), about actor, director and activist George Clooney. It was based in part on Avlon's trip accompanying Clooney to South Sudan to witness the referendum for independence from the North after two decades of civil war. His essay on New York, "The Resilient City", written after the 9/11 attacks, was selected to conclude the anthology Empire City: New York Through the Centuries (2002). Fred Siegel, the author of The Future Once Happened Here, praised it as "the single best essay written in the wake of 9/11." In 2010, Avlon published Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America about the evolution of fringe political movements and their inroads into mainstream American politics. Bill Clinton commented: Wingnuts offers a clear and comprehensive review of the forces on the outer edges of the political spectrum that shape and distort our political debate. Shedding more heat than light they drive frustrated alienated citizens away from the reasoned discourse that can produce real solutions to our problems. In 2011, Avlon co-edited the anthology Deadline Artists: America's Greatest Newspaper Columns with Jesse Angelo and Errol Louis. The book earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly prior to publication. The trio edited and published a sequel in 2012, Deadline Artists 2: Scandals, Tragedies and Triumphs. An opinion piece in The Washington Post described Deadline Artists as "one of the greatest collections of newspaper articles ever compiled" and saluted 'DA2' as "an equally superb sequel...may more siblings follow." During the 2012 presidential campaign, Avlon was among the first reporters to suggest that Rick Santorum, rather than Mitt Romney, had won the narrow Iowa caucuses (Santorum was declared the victor weeks after the