Robert Sam Anson

Robert Sam Anson (March 12, 1945 – November 2, 2020) was an American journalist and author. He was noted for his work as a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. He also wrote many articles for Esquire, Life, Time, The Atlantic and other magazines.

He authored six nonfiction books, including Gone Crazy and Back Again: The Rise and Fall of the Rolling Stone Generation, about Jann Wenner and his magazine.

Early life Anson was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on March 12, 1945. His mother, Virginia Rose Anson, worked as a teacher. She raised him as a single parent, with the help of her own parents. His grandfather, Sam B. Anson, was a notable personality in the city's journalism industry as editor and publisher of several local daily newspapers. Anson graduated from Saint Ignatius High School in 1963. He went on to study international relations and English at the University of Notre Dame, obtaining a bachelor's degree from that institution in 1967.

Anson started writing for Time during his studies and was consequently employed there full-time after graduation.

Career Two years after graduating, Anson went to Vietnam and Cambodia to cover the Vietnam War for Time. He was taken prisoner by North Vietnamese troops on August 3, 1970, and remained in captivity for three weeks. He avoided execution after convincing his captors that he was a journalist. He discovered 15 years later that Hesburgh called Pope Paul VI, who purportedly appealed to the Cambodian authorities to secure Anson's release.

His 1981 Esquire cover story on Doug Kenney, "The Life and Death of a Comic Genius," was the first major print remembrance of the National Lampoon humorist and screenwriter. Anson attempted to write about The Walt Disney Company in the early 1990s. However, his publisher, Simon & Schuster, abruptly called off the project. He consequently sued the publishing company for $1 million, alleging that they had been pressured by superiors in the industry to abandon his book. The two parties eventually reached an out of court settlement.

Anson conducted an interview with Hesburgh in 2006. They discussed political and global issues, as well as their past interactions with each other. The interview was not published until after Hesburgh's death in 2015. Gone Crazy and Back Again: The Rise and Fall of the Rolling Stone Generation (1981). Garden City: Doubleday. Exile: The Unquiet Oblivion of Richard M. Nixon (1984). New York: Simon and Schuster. Best Intentions: The Education and Killing of Edmund Perry (1987). New York: Random House. War News: A Young Reporter in Indochina (1989). New York: Simon and Schuster;