James Reston Jr.

James Reston, Jr. (born March 8, 1941) is an American author and playwright.

Early life

Reston was born in New York City and raised in Washington, D.C. He was awarded a 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.

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).^[1] Reston is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C.^[2] 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 17 books, three 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. Five of his 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 was a main selection 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 and Collision at Home Plate have been optioned by Hollywood. In 1976-77. . Reston was David Frost's Watergate adviser for the historic Nixon Interviews which forced 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.) His book on the historic interviews, The Conviction of Richard Nixon, is the basis for the hit play, Frost/Nixon, in which the Jim Reston character is the narrator. In the Hollywood film adaptation of the play, directed by Ron Howard, Reston is played by the actor Sam Rockwell. The movie received 5 Academy Award nominations. Reston's 2013 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.^[3]

The author has remarked 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 a seminal essay 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 Challenger accident in January 1986.

A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam Memorial is his latest book. 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 War wall in Washington and a determined group of veterans, led by ex-Virginia senator, Jim Webb, who opposed the design as insulting to veterans and tried to scuttle the choice. The New York Times dubbed A Rift in the Earth "a superb and unexpectedly affecting book."

Reston's four plays are: "Sherman the Peacemaker" which premiered at the Playmakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, N.C. in 1979; "Jonestown Express" premiered at the Trinity Square Repertory Company in 1982; "Galileo's Torch", which adapted from his biography of Galileo, 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.

Reston's articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Time, The New York Times Magazine, George, Esquire, American Theatre, Playboy, and Rolling Stone.r 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, has three children, and lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland. His eldest daughter, Maeve Reston, is a television journalist.^[4] His 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, portrayed by Sam Rockwell.^[5]

Bibliography

References

External links

• James Reston Jr. discusses "Dogs of God" at the Massachusetts School of Law
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • Booknotes interview with Reston on The Lone Star: The Life of John Connally, December 17, 1989.
  • Website: www.restonbooks.com