Evan Thomas

Evan Welling Thomas III (born April 25, 1951) is an American journalist, historian, lawyer, and author. He is the author of 11 books, including two New York Times bestsellers.

Early life and career Thomas was born in Huntington, New York, and raised in nearby Cold Spring Harbor. He graduated from Phillips Academy and received his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University and his Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law. After 1991, he was a reporter, writer, and editor at Newsweek for 24 years. Prior to that, he was at Time. Thomas began his reporting career at The Bergen Record in northeastern New Jersey.

In 1992, Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates granted Thomas access to view classified Central Intelligence Agency files.

He was for 20 years a regular panelist on the weekly public affairs TV show Inside Washington until the show ceased production in December 2013.

He taught writing and journalism at Harvard and Princeton between 2003 and 2014. For seven years, from 2007 to 2014, he was the Ferris Professor of Journalism in residence at Princeton.

Family Thomas's father Evan Sr. (center), grandfather Norman (left) and grandmother Violet (right) in a 1928 Socialist Party publication He is the son of Anna Davis (née Robins) and Evan Welling Thomas II, an editor who worked for HarperCollins and W. W. Norton & Company. His grandfather, Norman Thomas, was a six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.

He is married, and he and his wife, an attorney, are the parents of two daughters, including writer Louisa Thomas. They live in Washington, D.C.

Works Books The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. Walter Isaacson, Evan Thomas, Simon & Schuster, 1986; Simon & Schuster, 1997. The Man to See: The Life of Edward Bennett Williams. Simon & Schuster, 1992. The Very Best Men: The Early Years of the CIA. Simon & Schuster, 1996. Back from the Dead: How Clinton Survived the Republican Revolution. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997. Robert Kennedy: His Life. Simon & Schuster, 2000. John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy. Simon & Schuster, 2004. Sea of Thunder: Four Naval Commanders and the Last Sea War. Simon & Schuster, 2007. A Long Time Coming: The Inspiring, Combative 2008 Campaign and the Historic Election of Barack Obama. PublicAffairs, 2009. The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898, Little, Brown and Company, 2010. Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World. Little, Brown and Company. Being Nixon: A Man Divided. Random House, 2015. First: Sandra Day O'Connor. Random House, 2019. Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II. Random House, 2023.

Articles Thomas, Evan (1996). "A Singular Opportunity – Gaining Access to CIA's Records". Studies in Intelligence. 39 (5): 19–23.