A journalist and critic, Stu Cohen received a BA from Brooklyn College and pursued graduate studies in anthropology before moving to Boston in the late 1960s, where he began a career as a freelance writer. Although his work initially focused on foreign affairs and the arts, his increasing interest in photography and its relationship to questions of social justice led him to extended study of the FSA archives at the Library of Congress which in turn led him to write The Likes of Us. Cohen eventually moved from writing to political and social advocacy and his later career was spent working with the Education Development Center. He died in 1995.