Dr. Benjamin Spock, through his Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, may have had a greater effect on the everyday lives of more people than any other living American. His personal life, however, was shaken by failure and tragedy. Thomas Maier's extensive interviews with Spock, his family, and others who knew him draw the first complete picture of this complicated man, an American original of the importance of Henry Ford or Thomas Alva Edison. Known for his fatherly, folksy wisdom, Spock was at the same time a revolutionary and a magnet for controversy throughout his life. He camouflaged Fruen for Americans in his baby-care book, one of the best-selling books of all time. When he applied his ideals to politics, Spock shocked the country by protesting against the Vietnam war with Martin Luther King in 1967 and was attacked both by conservatives for fostering a "permissive" society and by feminists for his traditional attitudes about women's role in the family. Perhaps even more surprising, however, is Spock's troubled personal life: the breakdown and alcoholism of his first wife, his own failures as husband and father, his marriage to a much younger woman, and the suicide of his grandson. Although a tragic example of a man who helped millions but couldn't benefit from his own advice, Dr. Spock helped to create America as it is today, and Dr. Spock shows how the man reflects both the successes and failures of our society.
America in our times is the backdrop for my four biographies, all of which have been singled out by critics for their best-of-the-year honors.
Now out in paperback and Kindle, my most recent biography about Masters and Johnson ("Masters of Sex", Basic Books, 2009) was called "eye-opening" and "a bombshell" by the Sunday New York Times Book Review, "well written with good humor" by the NY Times daily reviewer Dwight Garner, and "an intelligent and well-conceived biography" by the Washington Post, along with a starred review by Booklist. The Chicago Tribune listed it among the paper's favorite non-fiction books of 2009. [Oprah's "O" magazine even cited it among its top 10 "smart, engaging, occasionally uproarious" books dealing with sex]. My investigative findings -- revealing that Masters and Johnson fabricated "gay conversion" case studies in their landmark homosexuality book -- prompted headlines in The New York Times, Scientific American and speaking engagements at Harvard Medical School and the National Academy of Sciences in California. This first-time biography of Masters and Johnson also received "blurb" endorsements from Gay Talese, Nelson DeMille and biographer Debby Applegate, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Sony Pictures Television recently bought the rights to this book and has hired Michelle Ashford (a writer of the Emmy-winner HBO's "John Adams" and Emmy-nominated for the Spielberg-Hanks miniseries "The Pacific") to develop the script.
Many wondered what I could say that was new in "The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings" (Basic Books, 2003) but, as many critics noted, this 700-page history achieved that goal and was featured on ABC's "20/20" program, the CBS Evening News, NBC's "Today" show and in publications around the world. "The Kennedys" was praised as one of the top 10 all-time JFK books by the American Booksellers Association's "Book Sense" program. It was featured prominently as annual holiday choice by USA Today's literary critics. It was also a selection of the Book of the Month Club, the History Book Club, excerpted in Redbook and received "blurb" endorsements from historians James MacGregor Burns, Ronald Steel and Newsweek's Evan Thomas. The unabridged audiotape version of "The Kennedys" also won the Earphone Award from Audiofile magazine. Warners Bros. Home Video produced a DVD documentary from my book with the same name that was sold in 2008 along with Oliver Stone's classic movie feature "JFK".
"Dr. Spock An American Life" (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1998), was selected as one of the top ten non-fiction books of 1998 by The Boston Globe and as a "Notable Book of the Year" by The New York Times. Excerpts appeared in Newsweek, U.S News and World Report and it was condensed as a Readers' Digest book. I also appeared on NBC's "Today" show, C-Span's "BookTV," and served as consultant and on-air commentator for a documentary about Dr. Spock's life, jointly produced by the BBC and A&E's "Biography." A paperback version was published in spring 2003 by Basic Books to mark Dr. Spock's 100th birthday. Filmmaker Susanna Styron, daughter of novelist William Styron and a teacher at Columbia's film school, bought the rights to this book with her production company.
"Newhouse: All the Glitter, Power and Glory of America's Richest Media Empire and the Secretive Man Behind It," (St. Martin's Press, 1994) won the Frank Luther Mott Award by the National Honor Society in Journalism and Mass Communication as best media book of the year. Excerpts appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Worth, and The London Telegraph magazine. An updated trade paperback of "Newhouse," published by Johnson Books, was picked by Entertainment Weekly as one of the top ten "must reads" for the 1997 summer season.
Since 1984, I've been a writer for Newsday in New York, previously working at the Chicago Sun-Times. In 2002, I won the world's top $20,000 investigative prize from the International Consortium of Investigative Reporting, now called the "Daniel Pearl Award", for a series about the deadly exploitation of immigrant workers, besting other finalists from The New Yorker, the BBC, and Sunday Times of London. Others investigative series of mine have won the national Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award, the national Worth Bingham Award, National Headliners Award, New York Deadline Club, Society of Silurians and many others. Based on a Newsday investigation, I worked as paid consultant to CBS News' "48 Hours" show for a segment on international child abduction. In 2010, my print series and accompanying video documentary about Brookhaven National Lab's treatment of nuclear bomb victims in the Pacific won Newsday's first Emmy Award nomination as well as the National Headliners Award. I earned a master's degree in 1982 from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where I won the television documentary prize at graduation. and was later awarded a McCloy fellowship to Europe.
