James Reston, Jr. | |
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Born |
James Barrett Reston, Jr. September 1, 1943 New York City, USA |
Residence | Chevy Chase, Maryland |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
Occupation |
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Parent(s) | James Reston |
James Barrett Reston, Jr. (born September 1, 1943) is an American author and journalist. His father was the American journalist James Reston.
Reston was born in New York City September 1, 1943 and raised in Washington, D.C.. He earned his BA in philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) while on a Morehead Scholarship. 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.
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). Reston is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. and has been a fellow at the American Academy in Rome and a scholar in residence at the Library of Congress.
Reston is the author of 13 books, three plays, and numerous articles in national magazines. His works of both fiction and non-fiction cover mostly 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. Three of his works, Galileo: A Life, The Last Apocalypse, and Warriors of God, have been translated into ten foreign languages. Warriors of God and Collision at Home Plate have been optioned by Hollywood. His latest work, The Accidental Victim, is a non-fiction book about John F. Kennedy's assassination which argues that Texas Governor John Connally was Lee Harvey Oswald's intended victim.