Unbowed Books is led by founder and publisher Alec Klein, who is also a consultant, entrepreneur, cofounder and president of a news operation, bestselling author and award-winning investigative journalist formerly of The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

His groundbreaking investigations have uncovered a wide array of wrongdoing, leading to significant reforms, congressional hearings, changes in federal law, criminal convictions and more than half a billion dollars in government fines. His investigations have also helped set free many prisoners across the nation who were wrongfully convicted of murder and falsely accused of other crimes. Alec’s work has helped free several people who were unjustly sentenced to life in prison. And he has helped dozens of excessively sentenced prisoners gain their freedom and regain their lives through parole, commutations and pardons.

Alec’s first book, Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner, was a national bestseller published by Simon & Schuster. The book was translated into Japanese and Chinese, excerpted in Great Britain and selected as one of the “Best Business Books” by Library Journal and Strategy + Business.

His second book of nonfiction, A Class Apart: Prodigies, Pressure, and Passion Inside One of America’s Best High Schools, also published by Simon & Schuster, was named “One of the Best Education Books of the Year” by the American School Board Journal and translated into Chinese, where it went through several printings.

His memoir, Aftermath: When It Felt Like Life Was Over, published by Republic Book Publishers, is a story about faith, forgiveness and redemption. His most recent book, Whispered Word, published by Beaufort Books, is a novel about an investigative reporter looking into a wrongful conviction.

In 2018, Alec founded Matthew 56 Consulting, LLC, a media firm with clients nationwide and abroad, and Matthew 56 Investigations, LLC, which has successfully probed cases across the country.

As a consultant, Alec has worked with clients throughout the world, including members of Congress, national nonprofits, industry leaders, business trailblazers, political figures, top attorneys, celebrities and many others. Alec helped to create and launch an Oklahoma nonprofit that assists wrongfully convicted and excessively sentenced prisoners so that they can regain their freedom. He devised a system that has helped free dozens of women through parole and commutation, including some who had been sentenced to life in prison. He also helped to create a drug treatment program at a nonprofit in New York to give people a second chance at employment after failing drug screens.

Alec continues to work on a pro bono basis to help indigent prisoners who were wrongfully convicted or excessively sentenced.

A consultant on wide-ranging projects, Alec has helped clients throughout the world with media strategy and book projects, and he has also written many articles for local and national publications, earning a number of journalism awards. Over the past several years, Alec has also given many talks across the nation and abroad about his work, while also being interviewed widely on television and radio, online and in print.

In 2021, Alec cofounded The Wyoming Truth, which has grown rapidly to become an award-winning nonprofit daily news operation covering the state of Wyoming.  Under his leadership as president, The Wyoming Truth has published online and in print, run a summer internship program and become one of the largest news outlets in the state. The Wyoming Truth has been honored for virtually every aspect of its journalism, winning dozens of awards for long-form feature writing, general reporting, beat reporting, social justice reporting, editorials, political news, political features, education news, education features, business news, business features, news columns, front page design, editorial cartoons and feature photography. The Wyoming Truth also won a major grant from Google.

Writing for The Wyoming Truth, Alec was honored by the Society of Professional Journalists for his longform feature writing, social justice reporting and editorial writing. Alec also was honored by the National Newspaper Association Foundation for best investigative or in-depth story or series for articles he wrote about “Overreach in Wyoming’s Criminal Justice System.” He was also honored by the National Newspaper Association Foundation for his non-profile feature story and editorial writing. Alec won another award from the Society of Professional Journalists for long-form feature writing for his series, “The Faces of Addiction.”

In 2024, Alec was tapped to become the publisher of Beaufort Books, an independent book publisher based in New York City, helping to revamp its operations and grow the business in 2024 and 2025. Beaufort, founded over 40 years ago, publishes a mix of nonfiction and fiction titles. Beaufort has published several New York Times bestsellers.

As a Washington Post investigative reporter from 2000 to 2008, Alec wrote a groundbreaking series on the little-known but widespread practice of reusing single-use medical devices in the United States. The stories documented patient injuries and device malfunctions and showed how the industry has eluded comprehensive oversight and is comprised of several entrepreneurs who have run afoul of federal authorities. The series, which won the Society of American Business Editors and Writers award for special projects, prompted an investigation by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s investigative arm, congressional hearings and industry reform.

Alec also wrote a three-part series for The Washington Post about the world’s big three credit-rating firms, showing how they dominate an important part of global finance with little oversight or accountability, how the rating system is subject to manipulation and conflicts of interest, and how the credit raters use strong-arm tactics to generate business. His series, a first-place winner in Washington’s Society of Professional Journalists, prompted an investigation by the New York attorney general, congressional hearings and the passage of federal law to strengthen government oversight of the industry.

Among his other stories at The Washington Post, Alec conducted a yearlong investigation of AOL’s takeover of Time Warner. His investigation, based on hundreds of confidential AOL documents, showed how AOL secretly inflated its revenue to pull off the largest merger in U.S. history to create the biggest media company in the world. His investigation sparked investigations of AOL by the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Alec’s series also prompted the company, then called AOL Time Warner, to launch its own internal investigation of its accounting, which led the company to admit that it had improperly reported at least $190 million in advertising revenue, causing it to restate two years of financial results. The company agreed to pay $510 million to settle criminal and civil allegations that its AOL division improperly pumped up revenue before and after its merger with Time Warner. In the wake of Alec’s investigation, several top AOL executives were forced to resign, several business partners involved in AOL’s schemes were indicted and convicted on fraud charges and the AOL division that was the focus of his investigation was disbanded. For his coverage of AOL, Alec won the Gerald Loeb Award, business journalism’s highest honor. He also won awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in project reporting and the Virginia Press Association in news writing. Alec also contributed to a Pulitzer Prize-winning series on private security contractors in Iraq.

Alec has won a number of other awards and fellowships, including at the East-West Center and the Poynter Institute. Alec, who also worked as a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, The Baltimore Sun and The Virginian-Pilot, is a frequent guest speaker, having presented at the National Press Foundation, the American Press Institute, the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the Asian American Journalists Association, the South Asian Journalists Association, Unity: Journalists of Color, and various newspapers and other media outlets, schools, associations, clubs, conferences and education groups throughout the country and the world, including Albania, Canada, France, Japan and South Africa. Alec has been a guest lecturer at several colleges, including the University of California at Berkeley, George Washington University and New York University. He was also selected as a business writer-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Alec has given a series of webinars to professionals throughout the country and abroad. Alec has served as a judge for the Society of American Business Editors and Writers awards and other journalism contests and has appeared on several television and radio programs, including CNN, CNBC, CBS and NPR as well as the BBC and TV Asahi.

Alec, a Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude graduate of Brown University, is the author of several plays staged in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Rhode Island. His plays have also been selected for theater readings, including in New York, Washington, D.C., and Florida. One of his award-winning plays received a staged reading by Matthew Broderick and Fisher Stevens in New York City. Alec is the author of two published novels and the foreword to an edition of Show Me The Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication, a textbook adopted at universities across the nation.

Born in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., and raised in New York City, where he graduated from Stuyvesant High School, one of the top schools in the country, Alec is the son of a Japanese artist and an American journalist and the father of two children. Alec is a certified diver, avid tennis player and lover of dogs.