James Reston, Jr.

James Barrett Reston Jr. (March 8, 1941 – July 19, 2023) was an American journalist, documentarian and author of political and historical fiction and non-fiction. He wrote about the Vietnam War, the Jonestown Massacre, civil rights, the impeachment of Richard Nixon, and the September 11 attacks.

Early life Reston was born in Manhattan, New York City.

Reston's family moved to Washington, D.C. when he was two years old.

Career Reston was an assistant to and speechwriter for U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall from 1964 to 1965. This led to two books, both collections of essays, When Can I Come Home, in 1972 and The Amnesty of John David Herndon in 1973. American Theatre, George, Esquire, National Geographic, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Omni, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Saturday Review, Time, Vanity Fair, and Washington Post Magazine. —Sherman the Peacemaker premiered at the Playmakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1979, and was an outgrowth of his book, Sherman's March and Vietnam; and Luther's Trumpet is an adaptation of his 2016 book, Luther's Fortress, and premiered in September 2018. Reston's book was previously optioned by Phoenix Pictures, who had unsuccessfully pitched the concept to Scott as a potential project. Reston said, "They have built this film on the back of my intellectual property. They just read the first hundred pages and saw it has these great characters and a fantastic battle."

Reston was a Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C., from 1994 to 1995, and a Global Fellow from October 2002 to December 2022. He was also fellow at the American Academy in Rome.

Publications

Novels To Defend, to Destroy (1971) Collision at Home Plate: The Lives of Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti (1991) Galileo: A Life (1994) The Last Apocalypse: Europe in the Year 1000 A.D. (1998) Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade (2001) Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors (2005) Fragile Innocence: A Father's Memoir of His Daughter's Courageous Journey (2006) The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews (2007) Defenders of the Faith: Charles V, Suleyman the Magnificent, and the Battle for Europe, 1520–1536 (2009) The Accidental Victim: JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Real Target in Dallas (2013) A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial (2017) The Impeachment Diary: Eyewitness to the Removal of a President (2019).

Plays Sherman, the Peacemaker: A Play in Two Acts (1979) Galileo's Torch (2014) "Bush Administration Misuses the Word 'Caliphate (NPR, 2005) "Political Stem-Cell Debate Delays Medical Progress" (NPR, 2006) "Impeachment: The View from 1974" (NPR, 2019)

Television 88 Seconds in Greensboro (PBS Frontline, 1983) The Real Stuff (PBS Frontline,1987) The Mission of Discovery (PBS Frontline, 1988) Betting on the Lottery (PBS Frontline,1990)

Articles

"Vietnamize at Home", The New York Times (April 10, 1971) "Needed: A Grand Reconciliation: Not a Determination of Who Was More Moral on the War." Newsday (September 3, 1974) "Limited Amnesty: Not Easy: The President Gave Himself a Difficult Job" The New York Times (September 8, 1974) "Real Amnesty Would be Good for America" Newsday (March 31, 1975) "The Joan Little Case." The New York Times Magazine (April 6, 1975) "On Carter's Amnesty and Pardon Views" The New York Times (October 2, 1976) "Southern Justice and the Case of Joan Little" The New York Times (January 6, 1978) "The Breaking of Richard Nixon" Playboy (April 1978) "The Jonestown Papers." (Cover story). New Republic. (April 25, 1981) "Opinion: Meet the Program Past." The New York Times (June 27, 1981) "Reagan and Monroe." The New York Times (March 14, 1982) "A Matter of Honor," The New York Times (April 7, 1982) "Mission to a Mind" OMNI (1984) "Invitation to a Poisoning," Vanity Fair (February 1985) "United States Commission on Civil Rights: We Shall Undermine." Rolling Stone (March 13, 1986) "Collision Course." (Cover Story) Time (May 23, 1994) "The Persistence of Guilt. American Theatre. (January 1995) "The Monument Glut. The New York Times Magazine. (September 10, 1995) "Orion: Where Stars Are Born." National Geographic. (December 1995) "Opinion: Failing the 1869 Test." The New York Times (January 9, 1999) "Be Christina or Die." Christian History (1999) "Frost, Nixon, and Me." Smithsonian.(January 2009) "A Prophet in His Time." American Theatre (March 2002) "When Generosity Is Medically Necessary." The New York Times. (August 7, 2002) "Jesse James and Me." Smithsonian (October 2007) "Pointed Questions." Wilson Quarterly. (2012) "Correcting JFK Mythology on his Death" USA Today (November 13, 2013) "Induct Pete Rose into Hall of Fame: Column" USA Today (March 27, 2014) "Opinion: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Three Southern Villains." Newsweek (February 15, 2015) "Clark and Pritchett: A Comparison of Two Notorious Southern Lawmen." Southern Cultures (Winter 2016) "The Novelist's Event: Fact, Fiction, and a Writer's Search for a Universal Subject." Georgia Review (2018) "Opinion: Another Impeachable Offense." The New York Times. (May 6, 2019) To Heal a Nation': Creating the Vietnam Wall" American Heritage (June 2021) "Remembering Flight 93: 'Okay. Let's Roll American Heritage. (September/October 2021)