Author Information:

I was born in... Nah, let's not start that far back. Let's just say after dropping out of graduate school in history I became a football coach-- in fact, the first story I ever sold was to a coaching magazine, about a way to change blocking assignments at the line of scrimmage, and I was on the staff of a guy who was named national coach of the year. I quit coaching to write, first as a Washington journalist covering economics and national politics, then I finally began doing what I always intended and wanted to do: write books. Two of those books have in turn led me into active involvement in a couple of policy areas. Anyway, here's the more formal version of my bio: John M. Barry is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author whose books have won several dozen awards. In 2005 the National Academies of Science named The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history, a study of the 1918 pandemic, the year's outstanding book on science or medicine. In 1998 Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, won the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians for the year's best book of American history. His latest book is Roger Williams and The Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty, which has been named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, to be awarded late spring 2013. ( Scroll down for more about this book, including a syndicated op ed based on it.) His writing has received not only formal awards but less formal recognition as well. In 2004 GQ named Rising Tide one of nine pieces of writing essential to understanding America; that list also included Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address and Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail." His first book, The Ambition and the Power: A true story of Washington, was cited by The New York Times as one of the eleven best books ever written about Washington and the Congress. His second book The Transformed Cell: Unlocking the Mysteries of Cancer, coauthored with Dr. Steven Rosenberg, was published in twelve languages. And a story about football he wrote was selected for inclusion in an anthology of the best football writing of all time published in 2006 by Sports Illustrated.