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'{{Infobox person | honorific_prefix = | name = James Reston Jr. | image = | caption = | birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1941|03|08}} | birth_place = New York City | death_date = <!-- {{Death date and age|YYYY|MM|DD|YYYY|MM|DD}} (death date then birth date) --> | death_place = | death_cause = | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates = <!-- {{Coord|LAT|LONG|display=inline}} --> | monuments = | nationality = American | other_names = | education = | alma_mater = [[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]] | occupation = {{Plainlist| * Author * Playwright }} | years_active = | employer = | organization = | agent = | known_for = | notable_works = | style = | home_town = | television = | spouse = | partner = | children = 3 | parents = [[James Reston]]<br>Sally Fulton | relatives = | awards = | website = <!-- {{URL|www.example.com}} --> | religion = }} '''James Reston Jr.''' (born March 8, 1941)<ref name=ContempAuthors>{{cite book |title=Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series |chapter=Reston, James B. Jr. 1941– |chapter-url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/reston-james-b-jr-1941|publisher=[[Cengage]] |access-date=May 19, 2020}}</ref> is a prolific American author, noted for the wide range of his subjects, who has written nineteen books and four plays. ==Early life== Reston was born in [[New York City]] and raised in [[Washington, D.C.]], the son of journalist [[James Reston|James "Scotty" Reston]] and Sally Fulton. He was awarded a [[Morehead-Cain Scholarship|Morehead Scholarship]] to the [[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]] and earned his BA in philosophy there in 1963. At UNC, he was an All-South soccer player, and retains the single game scoring record for the university (5 goals against NC State, October 18, 1962). He attended [[Oxford University]] during his junior year.<ref name=ContempAuthors/> ==Career== Reston was an assistant to [[U.S. Secretary of the Interior]] [[Stewart Udall]] (1964–1965) and served in the [[U.S. Army]] (1965–1968) as an intelligence officer. He was a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina (1971–81).<ref>{{cite news|title=The Author|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/9953602/the_la_crosse_tribune/|work=The La Crosse Tribune|date=January 21, 1973|location=Wisconsin, La Crosse|page=28|via = [[Newspapers.com]]|accessdate = March 31, 2017}} {{Open access}}</ref> Reston is a Senior Scholar at the [[Woodrow Wilson Center]] in Washington D.C.<ref>[http://www.wilsoncenter.org/staff/james-reston-jr James Reston Jr], Wilson Center Experts, [[Wilson Center]]</ref> and has been a fellow at the American Academy in Rome and a resident scholar at the Kluge Center at the [[Library of Congress]]. Reston is the author of 19 books, four plays, and numerous articles in national magazines. His works of both fiction and non-fiction cover a wide range of historical and political topics. He was awarded the Prix Italia and the Dupont–Columbia Award for his 1983 90-minute radio documentary on [[National Public Radio]], ''Father Cares: the Last of [[Jonestown]]''. In a column in the New York Times, April 23, 1983,Anthony Lewis said of the NPR program: "It is quite simply one of the great achievements in the history of broadcasting." Five of Reston's works, ''Galileo: A Life'', ''The Last Apocalypse'', ''Warriors of God'', ''Dogs of God'', and ''Luther's Fortress'' have been translated into thirteen foreign languages. ''Warriors of God'' was an international best seller. ''The Last Apocalypse'' and ''The Innocence of Joan Little: a Southern Mystery'' were a main selections of the Book of the Month Club in 1999. His 2015 book, ''Luther's Fortress'', was nominated for the prestigious Philip Schaff Prize for the best book about church history published in 2015–16. ''The Innocence of Joan Little'', ''Warriors of God'', ''Collision at Home Plate'' and his 2021 novel, The ''19th Hijacker'', have been optioned by Hollywood.{{citation needed|date=December 2018}} In 1976–77, Reston was [[David Frost]]'s [[Watergate scandal|Watergate]] adviser for the historic [[Nixon interviews]] which forced [[Richard Nixon|ex-President Nixon]] to apologize for his Watergate crimes and remains the most watched public affairs television program in broadcast history. (The Watergate interrogation had an audience of 57 million viewers.) Touted in an April 1978 Playboy article as Frost's "top gun," Reston wrote an 80 page interrogation document for Frost, before the Watergate interrogation that included tapes of incriminating conversations between Richard Nixon and his aide, Charles Colson that surprised Nixon and allowed Frost to take control of the interchange. Reston's book on the historic interviews, ''The Conviction of Richard Nixon,'' is the basis for the play [[Frost/Nixon (play)|Frost/Nixon]], in which the Jim Reston character is the narrator. In the [[Frost/Nixon (film)|Hollywood film adaptation]] of the play, directed by [[Ron Howard]], Reston is played by the actor [[Sam Rockwell]]. The movie received five [[Academy Awards|Academy Award]] nominations. In 2021 the author published his third novel, ''The Nineteenth Hijacker: a novel of 9/11''. Of it the novelists Lucian Truscott IV said, “I’ve always thought a novelist’s nightmare would be trying to deal with the terrorists who attacked America on 9/11. And what do you know, but James Reston Jr. did it! He imagined himself into the mind of “th�e 19th Hijacker” with such courage and writerly abandon, his book will leave you breathless. A masterpiece.” In October 2019 he published his diary of the last six weeks of the Nixon presidency which he wrote in 1974 when he came to Washington from North Carolina to witness the impeachment drama. Its title is ''The Impeachment Diary: Eyewitness to the Removal of a President''. Of it, the distinguished constitutional scholar and Harvard professor, Laurence Tribe wrote: "If ever there was an “eyewitness to history” worthy of the name, James Reston Jr. surely deserves that title. His close-up-and-personal account of the process that drove an American president from office is impossible to put down. To read it is to live it." In 1989 Reston published his first full length biography, ''The Lone Star: the Life of John Connally''. An excerpt of the biography was published in a Time Magazine cover story on November 28, 1988 entitled "Who Was the Real Target in Dallas." Reston's 2013 work, ''The Accidental Victim: JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Real Target in Dallas'', extended the author's controversial argument that it was Texas Governor John Connally, not President John F. Kennedy who was Lee Harvey Oswald's intended target. In the books and in an earlier opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times (November 22, 2004) Reston also argued that President Kennedy would have survived Oswald's first bullet that passed through his neck, but the tight girdle the president wore to support his bad back held him upright in the presidential limousine for the assassin's fatal second shot. The author has remarked in an interview with the Georgia Review (summer 2019) that the two hardest books he wrote were the book about the 1978 Jonestown mass suicide entitled ''Our Father Who Art in Hell: the Life and Death of the Reverend Jim Jones'' (1981) and the book about his handicapped daughter, Hillary called ''Fragile Innocence'' (2006). About the emotional difficulties of a writer dealing with difficult material, Reston wrote an essay, also in the 2018 summer issue of the Georgia Review, entitled: "The Novelist's Event: Fact, Fiction, and a Writer's Search for a Universal Subject." In 1985 Reston was the ''[[Newsweek]]'', [[PBS]], and [[BBC]] candidate to be the first writer in space on the NASA space shuttle. That program was scrapped after the [[Space Shuttle Challenger disaster|Challenger accident]] in January 1986. On May 23, 1994 the author published his second cover story in Time Magazine entitled "Cosmic Clash" on the amazing impact of the Shoemaker Levy 9 comet into the planet, Jupiter. The author's work in television four public television documentaries: "88 Seconds in Greensboro" (1984) was an inside look into the killings of civil rights protesters by Ku Klux Klansmen in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1983. It won the Ohio State Award for excellence in broadcasting; "The Real Stuff" (1985) about the risk astronauts face on the space shuttle; "The Mission of Discovery"(1988) was a WETA-BBC co-production about the preparations for first space shuttle mission after the Challenger disaster; and "Betting on the Lottery" 1990) on the state lottery phenomenon. ''A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam Memorial'' was published in 2017. Springing from the roots of his military service during the Vietnam War, the book tells the story of the five-year battle between youthful [[Maya Lin]], the winning designer of the [[Vietnam Veterans Memorial]] in Washington and a determined group of veterans, led by ex-Virginia senator [[Jim Webb]], who opposed the design as insulting to veterans and who tried to scuttle the choice. The New York Times dubbed ''A Rift in the Earth'' "a superb and unexpectedly affecting book." The writer wrote four plays. All were stage adaptations of his books. "Sherman the Peacemaker" premiered at the Playmakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, N.C. in 1979, and was an outgrowth of his book, ''Sherman's March and Vietnam'' (1985). "Jonestown Express" , based upon his 1981 book, ''Our Father Who Art in Hell'', premiered at the Trinity Square Repertory Company in 1982; "Galileo's Torch", adapted from his biography of Galileo, ''Galileo: A Life''(1994) has had seven productions between 2014–17, including at the University of Oklahoma, Folger Shakespeare Theatre, and the Castleton Festival in 2017; and "Luther's Trumpet", an adaptation of his 2016 book, ''Luther's Fortress'', premiered in September 2018 and was re-mounted as a hybrid zoom production in May 2021, under the auspices of the theater program at George Mason University, starriing two of Washington's most prominent stage actors, Ed Gero and Craig Wallace.. Reston's articles have appeared in ''[[The New Yorker]]'', ''[[Vanity Fair (magazine)|Vanity Fair]]'', ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'', ''[[The New York Times Magazine]]'', ''[[George (magazine)|George]]'', ''[[Esquire (magazine)|Esquire]]'', ''American Theatre'', ''[[Playboy]]'', and ''[[Rolling Stone]].'' In recent years he has lectured widely in the United States and overseas on the millennium and the Crusades, citing their relevance to modern issues. ==Personal life== Reston is married to Denise Leary, a lawyer who served as deputy general counsel at National Public Radio for 25 years., They have three children, and live in [[Chevy Chase, Maryland]]. His eldest daughter, Maeve, is a television journalist at CNN..<ref>{{cite web|title=Maeve Reston |url=http://www.cnn.com/profiles/maeve-reston |website=CNN |accessdate=1 April 2017 |archiveurl=https://archive.is/20170401002403/http://edition.cnn.com/profiles/maeve-reston |archivedate= 1 April 2017 |url-status=dead }}</ref> His second child, Devin, is a stock broker in Montana. Reston's book, ''Fragile Innocence, A Father's Memoir of His Daughter's Courageous Journey'' (2006), is the story of his disabled daughter, Hillary. A front page review in the ''Washington Post'' called it "carefully crafted....a page-turning read" and ''Newsweek'' called it "a story of love and hope." A ''Washington Post'' Book World Best Book of 2006 and a finalist for the 2006 Books for a Better Life Award, it was briefly on the ''Washington Post'' best seller list. ==Legacy== Reston is depicted in the 2008 film ''[[Frost/Nixon (film)|Frost/Nixon]]'', portrayed by [[Sam Rockwell]].<ref>{{cite news | author=Manohla Dargis | title=Mr. Frost, Meet Mr. Nixon | url=https://movies.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/movies/05fros.html | work=New York Times | date=2008-12-05 | accessdate=2009-02-04}}</ref> "The Novelist's Event: Fact, Fiction, and a Writer's Search for a Universal Subject," Georgia Review, summer 2018. https://thegeorgiareview.com/posts/the-novelists-event-fact-fiction-and-a-writers-search-for-a-universal-subject/ "The Obsessions, the Overall Work: An Interview with James Reston, Jr., Georgia Review, summer 2018.https://thegeorgiareview.com/posts/the-obsessions-the-overall-work-an-interview-with-james-reston-jr/ == Bibliography == ===Books=== * ''To Defend, To Destroy'', a novel, 1971 * ''The Amnesty of John David Herndon'', 1973 * ''The Knock at Midnight'', a novel, 1975 * ''The Innocence of [[Joan Little]]'', 1977 * ''[[William Tecumseh Sherman|Sherman]], the Peacemaker'', a play, 1979 * ''Our Father Who Art in Hell, The Life and Death of [[Jim Jones]]'', 1981 * ''Jonestown Express'', a play, 1984 * ''[[William Tecumseh Sherman|Sherman]]'s March and [[Vietnam war|Vietnam]]'', 1985 * ''The Lone Star: the Life of [[John Connally]]'', 1989 * ''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: [[Christopher Columbus|Columbus]], [[Spanish Inquisition|the Inquisition]], and the Defeat of the [[Moors]]'', 2005 * ''Fragile Innocence: A Father's Memoir of His Daughter's Courageous Journey'', 2006<ref>{{cite news | author=Polly Morrice | title=What Not to Expect | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/books/review/26morrice.html | work=New York Times | date=2006-03-26 | accessdate=2009-02-04}}</ref> * ''The Conviction of [[Richard Nixon]]: The Untold Story of the [[The Nixon Interviews|Frost/Nixon]] Interviews'', 2007 * ''Defenders of the Faith: [[Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor|Charles V]], [[Suleyman the Magnificent]], and the Battle for Europe, 1520–1536'', 2009 * ''The Accidental Victim'', 2013 * ''Luther's Fortress: Martin Luther and His Reformation Under Siege'', 2015 * ''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. *''The Nineteenth Hijacker: a 9/11 Novel'', 2021 ===Articles=== {{cite journal |last=Reston |first=James Jr. |date=28 January 1985 |title=A Reporter at Large: You Cannot Refine It |journal=[[The New Yorker]] |volume=60 |issue=50 |pages=35–71}} [[William Tecumseh Sherman|General William Tecumseh Sherman]]. '''Papers''' The papers of James Reston, Jr., are housed at the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, ==References== {{Reflist}} ==External links== *[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=948644992004554188&q=James+Reston James Reston Jr. discusses "Dogs of God" at the Massachusetts School of Law] *{{C-SPAN|James Reston 02}} **[https://web.archive.org/web/20120420001539/http://www.booknotes.org/Watch/10319-1/James+Reston+Jr.aspx ''Booknotes'' interview with Reston on ''The Lone Star: The Life of John Connally'', December 17, 1989.] **Website: www.restonbooks.com {{authority control}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Reston, James Jr.}} [[Category:1943 births]] [[Category:21st-century American historians]] [[Category:American political writers]] [[Category:American biographers]] [[Category:20th-century American dramatists and playwrights]] [[Category:Living people]] [[Category:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni]] [[Category:American male dramatists and playwrights]] [[Category:20th-century American male writers]] [[Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers]] [[Category:American male biographers]]'