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Steven Levy

American journalist

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ929788 ↗
Source-derived summary

Steven Levy (born 1951) is an American journalist and editor at large for Wired who has written extensively for publications on computers, technology, cryptography, the internet, cybersecurity, and privacy. He is the author of the 1984 book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which chronicles the early days of the computer underground. Levy has published eight books covering computer hacker culture, artificial intelligence, cryptography, and multi-year exposés of Apple, Google, and Facebook. His most recent book, Facebook: The Inside Story, recounts the history and rise of Facebook from three years of interviews with employees, including Chamath Palihapitiya, Sheryl Sandberg, and Mark Zuckerberg.

Early life and education

Levy was born in Philadelphia in 1951. He graduated from Central High School and received a bachelor's degree in English from Temple University. He earned a master's degree in literature from Pennsylvania State University.

Career

In the mid-1970s, Levy worked as a freelance journalist and frequently contributed to The Philadelphia Inquirer's Today magazine. In 1976, he was a founding co-editor of the Free Times, a weekly guide to happenings in Philadelphia. He became as senior editor of New Jersey Monthly, and rediscovered Albert Einstein's brain floating in a mason jar in the Wichita office of pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey while reporting a story in 1978.

Editorial summary

“Steven Levy” enters the record as american journalist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Steven, Levy and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1951, 1984, 1976, 1978—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1951-01-26. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Steven, Levy and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Steven Levy” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Steven, Levy and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q929788. VIAF identifies the subject as 42509500. The Library of Congress control number is n82253247. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1951, 1984, 1976 and 1978.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Steven Levy”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Steven Levy primary sources, Steven Levy archive and Steven research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Steven Levy”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Steven Levy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.