Myra MacPherson

Myra Lea MacPherson

While with the Post, she profiled those involved in Watergate, covered five presidential campaigns, women's rights issues and wrote a series on Vietnam veterans that led to her 1984 book Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation. It was the first trade book to examine post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and, according to Vietnam expert Arnold R. Isaacs, was "among the first to break the long national silence about the war [and] remains one of the most moving and important works on the Vietnam bookshelf". The author Joseph Heller wrote: "MacPherson's book belongs with the best of the works on Vietnam".

MacPherson's first book, The Power Lovers: An Intimate Look at Politicians and Their Marriages was an instant best seller when published by Doubleday in 1975. She Came to Live Out Loud: An Inspiring Family Journey through Illness, Loss and Grief was published in 1999 and won health care hospice awards. MacPherson's 2014 book, The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage and Scandal in the Gilded Age focused on Victorian hypocrisy on sex and women through the true story of two feminist sisters in the 1870s and fought for rights still denied women. The weird phrase meant nothing to her but it was enough to tell Toots off and to exit the restaurant.

Her 2006 biography of I. F. Stone, All Governments Lie! The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone, won the 2007 Ann M. Sperber Award for media biography, and was a finalist for a 2008 PEN Center USA literary award; it was also named a best book and best biography of the year by the Boston Globe, Rocky Mountain News and BookList.com.

MacPherson wrote for The New York Times, numerous national magazines, and for blogs such as Salon, The Huffington Post and the Nieman Watchdog blog on journalism. She was on the advisory board of the Harvard Nieman I.F. Stone Award. She continued her interest in helping young journalists through the I. F. Stone Award project and the Molly Award, given annually in remembrance of Molly Ivins.

While doing book research MacPherson was a fellow at Rutgers University, a Ford Foundation fellow in Bellagio, Italy, and a recipient of a Fulbright Grant to study in Japan.

In 2016, All Governments Lie: Truth Deception and the Spirit of I. F. Stone, a 2016 documentary featuring today's best investigative reporters was based in part on her Stone book. The documentary premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival; Oliver Stone was the executive producer and journalist Fred Peabody directed the film.

Personal life MacPherson was married twice; her first marriage to Washington sportswriter Morris Siegel ended in divorce. She met her second husband, liberal Florida State Senator, Jack Gordon, when she covered the ultimately rejected Equal Rights Amendment for The Washington Post in 1977. MacPherson and Gordon would remain married until Gordon's death in 2005.

MacPherson died in Washington, D.C., on February 2, 2026, from congestive heart failure.