Richard Kluger
Richard Kluger (born 1934) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, focusing chiefly on society, politics and history, who previously was a journalist and book publisher.
Early Life and Family
Kluger grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He attended the Horace Mann School and Princeton University, there he was the 1955-56 chair of the Daily Princetonian. He enrolled in the Columbia School of Journalism but did not graduate.
Writing career
Kluger began his career as a journalist, writing for various small newspapers, and later the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and the New York Herald Tribune (he was its last literary editor), and magazines, including Forbes. Kluger left journalism to serve as executive editor at Simon & Schuster and editor-in-chief at Atheneum.
Kluger has written books of fiction and social history. He is the author of six novels (and two others with his wife, Phyllis). Two of his books were National Book Award finalists, Simple Justice and The Paper (a history of the Herald Tribune). Moreover, his historical study of the American cigarette business, Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997.[1]
In 2011, Kluger published The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek: A Tragic Clash Between White and Native America.[2]
In 2006, Kluger published Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea,[3] an extended investigation of how the current territory of the United States was amassed. The book has received mixed reviews, alternately complimenting its detailed insights into the under-reported history of this issue, and criticizing the author's alleged biases, errors, inferences and presumptions, and allegedly verbose writing style.[4][5][6]
Politics
Kluger's writing has been described as liberal, and/or emphasizing racial-injustice perspectives.,[4][5]
In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[7]
References
- ↑ The 1997 Pulitzer Prize Winners, General Nonfiction (biography)
- ↑ Richard Kluger, The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek: A Tragic Clash Between White and Native America (Alfred A. Knopf 2011) ISBN 0307268896
- ↑ Richard Kluger, Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea (Alfred A. Knopf 1996) ISBN 0375413413
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Taylor, Alan, "The Old Frontiers" (book review of Seizing Destiny How America Grew From Sea to Shining Sea by Richard Kluger), The New Republic, May 7, 2008, key critiques excerpted at "Alan Taylor: Historian roasts journalist Richard Kluger for mistakes in a new book", The History News Network
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 assorted reviewers, Amazon_com Books, (book reviews of Seizing Destiny How America Grew From Sea to Shining Sea by Richard Kluger)
- ↑ Brookhiser, Richard, "Land Grab" (book review of Seizing Destiny How America Grew From Sea to Shining Sea by Richard Kluger), New York Times, August 12, 2007
- ↑ “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” January 30, 1968 New York Post
