The Pacific Circuit
An electrifying new book about Oakland and the world from MCD x FSG, March 2025
The COVID Tracking Project
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, I co-founded and co-lead the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic, which compiled, annotated, and published high-quality data about the outbreak.
Containers, a podcast
I made an 8-part podcast called CONTAINERS in spring 2017. Here's some background on the podcast.
American Aqueduct
This is probably the best feature I've ever written. It's about the saga of water in California.
PUBLISHED ON FEBRUARY 24, 2014
on THE ATLANTIC
Hood, California, is a farming town of 200 souls, crammed up against a levee that protects it from the Sacramento River.
Powering the Dream
Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology was my first book. It tried to trace both the tech and culture of renewable energy through time.
You can buy the book here.
Housing and Racism
For the past couple years, I've been looking into various aspects of racism in the nation's housing systems, past, present, and future. This article covers some of that work, especially around the infrastructure of home appraisal.
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 28, 2016
Projects
Alexis Madrigal is a journalist. He's interested in the ways that technology and capitalism warp the social and physical environments where people work and live. He's a staff writer at The Atlantic and working on a book about the port and city of Oakland.