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His biographical works include ''The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms'' (Touchstone, 1998), ''The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment'' (Random House, 1992) and ''Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy'' (1998), which he co-edited with Lawrence Lifschultz.<ref name="Hiar"/> |
His biographical works include ''The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms'' (Touchstone, 1998), ''The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment'' (Random House, 1992) and ''Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy'' (1998), which he co-edited with Lawrence Lifschultz.<ref name="Hiar"/> |
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In April 2010, his ''Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956–1978'', was released by Scribner. It is a meld of memoir and history, fusing his early life in the Arab world with an account of the American experience in the Middle East over the last half century. |
In April 2010, his ''Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956–1978'', was released by Scribner. It is a meld of memoir and history, fusing his early life in the Arab world with an account of the American experience in the Middle East over the last half century. Historian [[Benny Morris]], however, has written a critical book review, arguing that "practically nothing that Bird tells his readers about the Arab-Zionist conflict conforms with the facts of history," and emphasizing that these are "not ... matters of interpretation ... [but] questions of fact, of historical accuracy."<ref>http://www.tnr.com/print/book/review/kai-bird-mandelbaums-gate</ref><ref>http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/2011/02/benny-morris-does-history.html</ref> |
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==Awards== |
==Awards== |
Revision as of 00:27, 6 February 2011
Kai Bird is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning author and columnist, best known for his biographies of political figures.
Personal life
Bird was born in 1951 in Eugene, Oregon. His father was a U.S. Foreign Service officer, and he spent his childhood in Jerusalem, Beirut, Dhahran, Cairo and Bombay. He finished high school in 1969 at Kodaikanal International School in Tamil Nadu, South India. He received his BA from Carleton College in 1973 and a M.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University in 1975. Bird now lives in Kathmandu, Nepal with his wife, Susan Goldmark, country director of the World Bank, and their 17-year-old son, Joshua.[1]
Career
After graduation from Carleton, Bird received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which enables students to do a year of independent study outside the United States. He used the fellowship to do a photojournalism project in Yemen. Two years later, Goldmark was also awarded a Watson fellowship and the two of them spent 15 months as freelance journalists traveling through Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. “We filed weekly stories with papers like the Christian Science Monitor and Hong Kong’s Far Eastern Economic Review,” Bird says. “We hardly made any money, but we enjoyed what we were doing.”[2]
He was an associate editor of The Nation magazine from 1978–82 and then a Nation columnist.
His biographical works include The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (Touchstone, 1998), The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment (Random House, 1992) and Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (1998), which he co-edited with Lawrence Lifschultz.[1]
In April 2010, his Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956–1978, was released by Scribner. It is a meld of memoir and history, fusing his early life in the Arab world with an account of the American experience in the Middle East over the last half century. Historian Benny Morris, however, has written a critical book review, arguing that "practically nothing that Bird tells his readers about the Arab-Zionist conflict conforms with the facts of history," and emphasizing that these are "not ... matters of interpretation ... [but] questions of fact, of historical accuracy."[3][4]
Awards
Bird is a recipient of a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship (1973), an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship (1981), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1982), and a John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Grant for Research and Writing (1993–95). In 2001-2002 he was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Bird and co-author Martin J. Sherwin won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in biography for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Knopf, 2005). He and Sherwin also won the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award for their biography of Oppenheimer. In 2008, they also won the Duff Cooper Prize.
External links
- Interviews with Kai Bird on National Public Radio, 1998, 2005, 2010
- Kai Bird's articles for The Nation
- Pulitzer Board
- Washington Post article about the Pulitzer
References
- ^ a b Hiar, Corbin (2009-04-24). "Kai Bird: The Nation's Foreign Editor". Hiar learning. Wordpress. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
- ^ Alumni feature article
- ^ http://www.tnr.com/print/book/review/kai-bird-mandelbaums-gate
- ^ http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/2011/02/benny-morris-does-history.html