A fifth-generation native of Texas, Lind graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with honors in English and History (Plan II). In 1985 he received an MA in International Relations from Yale University and a JD from the University of Texas Law School in 1988. Lind moved to Washington, where after working as Assistant to the Director of the U.S. State Department’s Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs in 1990-91 he became Executive Editor of The National Interest from 1991-94. From 1994-98 he lived in Manhattan and worked for Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic and The New Yorker. In 1998 he became Washington Editor of Harper’s Magazine and moved to Washington, where in the same year he co-founded the New America Foundation with Ted Halstead, with whom Lind co-authored.

Lind has examined and defended the tradition of American democratic nationalism associated with Alexander Hamilton in a series of books, including The Next American Nation (1995), Hamilton’s Republic (1997), and What Lincoln Believed (2004). Lind has also written two books on U.S. foreign policy, The American Way of Strategy (2006) and Vietnam: The Necessary War (1999). A former neoconservative, Lind criticized the American Right in Up From Conservatism: Why the Right is Wrong for America (1996) and Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics (2004). Lind has also published a novel, Powertown (1996), a narrative poem, The Alamo (1997), a children’s book, Bluebonnet Girl (2004).