Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

"

Hillary Johnson has been a staff reporter or contributor to numerous newspapers, including Women's Wear Daily, The Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor and Minneapolis Tribune. She was a news reporter at "Life" magazine for four years and a contributing editor at "Rolling Stone" magazine for a decade. Writing primarily for magazines, she was also a frequent contributor to Vanity Fair, Vogue, Town & Country, W, Harper's Bazaar, US, In Style, Self, Working Woman, Mirabella, Elle, New York Magazine and the British Tatler, Her reporting has taken her from Love Canal in New York State to the U.S. Virgin Islands, Paris and St. Moritz, Switzerland for Town & Country. While at Life, she profiled Halston, Walter Cronkite, Jane Fonda and Jerry Falwell, Sr. She has interviewed presidential campaign frontrunners, writers like E.B. White and Gore Vidal, and movie stars like Cybil Shepherd, Kim Basinger, the sixteen-year-old Molly Ringwald and Laura Dern for Rolling Stone.

Her 1987 series about what was then called chronic Epstein-Barr virus disease, or "CEBV," commissioned by Rolling Stone, was a finalist in the reporting category at the 1988 National Magazine Awards. Afterward, she began a nine-year reporting odyssey that resulted in her critically acclaimed book, "Osler’s Web: Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic."

Kirkus Reviews called "Osler's Web" a "...relentless, meticulous and highly persuasive expose." Publisher's Weekly gave "Osler's Web" a starred review and devoted an article to the author's arduous reporting effort. The Boston Globe described "Osler's Web" as "...a compelling, valuable story that takes the reader into the petty, back-stabbing world of high-stakes medical research." The San Francisco Chronicle called the book a "...major documentary account of (ME), marked by human tragedy and quite obvious government shortcomings."

"Osler's Web" continues to be the definitive history of the pandemic of myalgic encephalomyelitis (a.k.a. "chronic fatigue syndrome") that began in the early 1980s.

"Reimagining Ruth" is the story of Johnson's passionate effort to reconnect with her artist mother after a long absence when she learns her mother is fatally ill. "At a time when memoir follows memoir in an onslaught of self-absorption, [Reimagining Ruth] is doubly significant," reviewer Floyd Skloot of the Portland Oregonian wrote of Johnson's story. "Not only is this a terrific book, it also reminds us of what the memoir form can offer."

Originally published by St. Martin's Press, a literary jury for the New Yorker magazine named "Reimagining Ruth" among the top-ten non-fiction books of the year.

Johnson has released a newly expanded and updated version of "Reimagining Ruth" in digital format. The new Kindle edition contains over 70 images of Ruth Jones's art and photographs from the author's childhood.

"'Osler's Web' was an incredibly complex story," Johnson says today. "I was dealing with a cast of hundreds, few of whom knew one another, and out of that I needed to fashion a coherent narrative. My reporting and writing effort took years. In contrast, when I sat down to write 'Reimagining Ruth,' the words seemed to pour onto the page. The effort took just six months. A few people have suggested to me it's the better book."

Johnson's most recent book, "The Why: The Historic ME/CFS Call to Arms" had its origins in a speech she was invited to give in London in 2009. That speech, prepared for a European audience, was a passionate account of the American Centers for Disease Control's shoddy, even criminal response to ME when the disease emerged in pandemic form in the early 1980s. Johnson, unconstrained by time here, enlarges her scope and delivers a scathing assessment of the CDC in a compact (92 pp.) paperback. Her anecdotes about the way CDC staff viewed the disease and its sufferers in the 1980s and well into the 1990s alone are worth the read. Those who read "The Why" likely will come away with with the unassailable impression that CDC has not only impeded scientific progress but has harmed ME sufferers in myriad ways.

Johnson graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in journalism, and received a masters degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She is a native of Minneapolis and lives in Upstate New York.