Matt Popper was born in Pompton Plains, New Jersey on 4/20/86, lived in the glorious suburb of Bloomfield until the age of four, and then moved on with his family to the ten-mile by ten-mile farm that is Tewksbury New Jersey. A John Starks fan since he can remember, Matt signed up for WRI 152 in the early fall of his freshman year at Princeton because an interest in art had been inspired by one website’s evaluation of the topic. All giggles aside, I (this third-person garbage had started to bother me after the first sentence) became interested in Manet’s American Civil War depictions not only because I had always liked Manet’s paintings (since I actually saw what they looked like a few months ago), but also due to the fact that the oddity of a Civil War naval battle in French waters warranted more than a cursory read-through. I found the collision of a French impressionist with a seemingly detached, exclusively American event a hell of a lot cooler than Henri Matisse’s Portraits of Women.
Back to this guy, I went to Delbarton School in Morristown New Jersey, one of the great places, where I played baseball and ran track. I was named a Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize laureate for outstanding academic promise in history, to be awarded April of 2005, for an essay involving the German Reformation published in The Concord Review. If you don’t believe me ask my mom. I like the Yankees, the Rangers, the Giants, the Knicks, the O.C., and G-Unit. I have a younger brother named Buddha, a mother, Susan, and a father, Richard. And I love them very much.