John M. Barry Reviews

I was born in... Nah, let's not start that way back. Let's just say after falling out of grad school in history I turned into a soccer coach-- in fact, the very first story I ever sold was to some training magazine, about a way to alter blocking assignments at the line of scrimmage, and that I was on the staff of a guy who had been appointed national coach of the year. I stopped coaching to write, initially as a Washington journalist covering economics and national politics, then I finally started doing exactly what I always planned and wished to do: write books. Two of those books have in turn led me into active involvement in a few of coverage areas. Anyway, here's the more appropriate version of my bio:

John M. Barry is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling writer whose novels have won a few dozen awards. In 2005 the National Academies of Science called The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history, a report on the 1918 pandemicthat the entire year’s outstanding publication on medicine or science. Back in 1998 Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, won the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians for the entire year’s best book of American history. His Most Recent publication is Roger Williams and The Production of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Spirit of Liberty, which has been named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, to be awarded late spring 2013. ( Scroll down to learn more about this book, such as a syndicated op ed based on it.)

His writing has obtained not just formal awards but less formal recognition too. In 2004 GQ named Growing Tide one of nine bits of writing crucial to understanding America; this list also included Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail. ” His first book, The Ambition and the Power: A real narrative of Washington, had been mentioned by The New Yor

John M. Barry Quality Chart