Flora Lewis

Flora Lewis (July 25, 1922 – May 26, 2002) was an American journalist.

Background Lewis was born into a Jewish family in Los Angeles. Her father Benjamin Lewis was a lawyer and mother Pauline Kallin a pianist. She graduated high school at the age of 15 and earned a BA from the University of California at Los Angeles graduating summa cum laude three years later. She was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received her master's degree from Columbia University's School of Journalism in 1942 just before turning 20. The Financial Times in London and France-Soir in Paris. She has the distinction of being the first woman to be given her own column on the New York Times op-ed page.

She died of cancer in Paris in 2002.

By contrast, columnist Eric Alterman wrote that at the Times, Lewis "filed from Paris what was quite possibly the most boring regular column in the history of journalism," which "certainly contained no hint that the writer was a woman." The New Republic′s "World's Most Boring" headline competition was inspired by a Lewis column titled "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative."

Writings Flora Lewis wrote four books and contributed to a fifth, according to the Library of Congress catalog.

A Case History of Hope: The Story of Poland's Peaceful Revolutions (1958) Polish Volcano: A Case History of Hope (1959) Red Pawn: The Story of Noel Field (1965) The Man Who Disappeared: The Strange History of Noel Field (1966) Pion rouge: l'histoire de Noël Field (1967) One of Our H-Bombs is Missing (1967) Europe: A Tapestry of Nations (1987) Europe: Road to Unity (1992) Avenir de la démocratie: un défi pour la société et l'Eglise (2000)

Photos Jewish Women's Archive Flora Lewis (by Bradford Bachrach)