Sam was born in Munich, Germany, grew up in Newark, N.J., and studied French and Russian Literature at Brandeis University where he graduated Cum Laude with Honors in Comparative Literature. He received his M.A. in Comp. Lit. at the University of Toronto, but dropped out of the Ph.D program before completing his dissertation on Edgar Allan Poe's influence on the French poet, Charles Baudelaire.
Having put his academic career on hold temporarily, he went out into the world to see what that was like. Over a period of about 15 years, he worked in various capacities including as a sharecropper, a sawyer in a lumber mill, a planter box maker, an English composition instructor, a bookstore/café owner, a San Francisco tour guide, a limousine driver, a computer store salesperson, a dBase III business applications developer, a quality assurance testing manager for Symantec's first Windows product, and a project management software implementation consultant to various Fortune 100 companies—in more or less chronological order.
In the late 80s Sam decided to pursue a Masters in Psychology at Sonoma State University in California. He went on to study the psychology of art with a special focus on the Italian Renaissance, and received his Doctorate from The Union Institute in 1995. He and his wife led their first tour in Florence in 1997, established a tour company shortly afterwards, and Tuscany Tours has been offering travel adventures in Italy and France ever since.
Sam has lived in several countries and enjoys learning languages. He speaks Italian and French fluently, Hebrew and Polish fairly decently, and Russian quite badly. Sam is the author of three books, including The Uffizi Gallery, a guidebook to Florence's greatest museum; Turning Tuscan: A Step-by-Step Guide to Going Native, a tongue-in-cheek memoir of his family’s adventures in adjusting to life in Italy; and The Renaissance of Imagination, an innovative study of key Renaissance artworks during Florence’s Golden Age (all available on this website with special free bonuses included).
He has been working for the past few years on a book about the contemporary culture wars, their historical and pre-historical origins, and what's at stake. Paradigm Wars: A Brief History of Consciousness from the Insects to the Anti-Zionists is scheduled to be published in early 2021. You can Sign Up Here to receive selected previews—and to be notified as soon as it's available!
