Christopher Michael Brick was born in Cheverly, Maryland on June 21, 1974. He attended the University of Texas at Austin before leaving to work for The Corpus Christi Caller-Times. He was later a speechwriter for a Texas state representative. He also worked for thestreet.com, a financial news site, and as a researcher on the 2001 book The Informant written by Kurt Eichenwald. He started working for The New York Times in 2001. He covered Enron's collapse in a financial scandal, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and crime in New York. He left The Times staff in 2008, but signed a yearlong contract to write a column called Pushing the Limit. He became a senior writer at The Houston Chronicle… in 2014. His first book, Saving the School: The True Story of a Principal, a Teacher, a Coach, a Bunch of Kids, and a Year in the Crosshairs of Education Reform, was published in 2012. The Big Race, a Kindle Single e-book about a nationwide motorcycle race, was published in 2013. He died of colon cancer on February 8, 2016 at the age of 41.