A native of Washington, D.C., Alex Beam began his career in journalism as a researcher at Newsweek magazine in 1977. From there he moved to Business Week as a correspondent in Los Angeles, and then as bureau chief in Moscow and Boston.

In 1986, Beam joined the Boston Globe as a business reporter. Beam is now a columnist for the Globe's Living/Arts page. During the 1996-1997 academic year, he was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.

In addition to his journalistic work, Beam is also the author of two novels about Russia, "Fellow Travelers" (1987) and "The Americans Are Coming!" (1991). The fictional president of the United States in "The Americans Are Coming!" is Arnold Schwarzenegger. His non-fiction book about McLean Hospital, "Gracefully Insane," was published in 2002.