The Works of James Reston, Jr. 1971 to 2023
  • About James Reston
  • Books
    • Vietnam >
      • A Rift in the Earth
      • Sherman's March and Vietnam
      • The Amnesty of John David Henderson
    • Medieval History >
      • Luther's Fortress
      • Defenders of Faith
      • Dogs of God
      • Warriors of God
      • The Last Apocalypse
      • Galileo
    • Biography >
      • The Accidental Victim
      • The Conviction of Richard Nixon
      • Collision at Home Plate
      • Lone Star
      • Our Father Who Art in Hell
      • The Innocence of Joan Little
    • Novels >
      • The Nineteenth Hijacker
    • Autobiography >
      • The Impeachment Diary
      • Fragile Innocence
  • Plays
  • Articles
    • Amnesty
    • Civil Rights and the South
    • Richard Nixon
    • Jonestown
    • Sports
    • Theatre, History, and Literature
    • Space
    • Washington D.C.
    • Hillary
    • Dallas Assassination
    • Millennium
    • Crusade and Jihad
    • 9-11
    • Presidential Impeachment
  • Other Writing
    • Book Reviews
    • Travel
    • Encounters
  • Interviews
  • Contact

James Reston Jr. 


"It is the triumph of the book that Reston himself is able to offer a convincing imitation of a Renaissance man..."
Washington Post review of Galileo: A Life, 1994


Picture
A young JR contemplating the portrait of Vinnie Ream, sculptress of Abraham Lincoln, 1981.
Author of 18 books, three plays, and numerous articles in national magazines. Winner of Prix Italia and the Dupont-Columbia Award for his chilling 1983 ninety-minute radio documentary on National Public Radio, "Father Cares: the Last of Jonestown." His last five historical works, Galileo: A Life, The Last Apocalypse, Warriors of God, Dogs of God, and Defenders of the Faith have been translated into thirteen foreign languages. Warriors of God and Collision at Home Plate have been optioned by Hollywood. The Last Apocalypse was a main selection of the Book of the Month Club. Warriors of God is an international best seller with over 200,000 copies sold world-wide and still selling. Fragile Innocence, his memoir of bringing up his handicapped daughter, reached #8 on the Washington Post best seller list.

In 1976-1977, Reston was David Frost's Watergate adviser for the famous Frost/​Nixon Interviews, seen by 57 million people world-wide. His narrative of that experience was published in 2007 and entitled The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/​Nixon Interviews and was the main inspiration to the British playwright, Peter Morgan, in the making of his hit London play, "Frost/​Nixon." Reston is a major character and the narrator of the play. In the Hollywood adaptation of the play, directed by Ron Howard,and nominated for five Academy Awards, Reston is played by the actor, Sam Rockwell.

His articles have appeared in the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Time, The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, National Geographic, Esquire, American Theatre, Playboy, and Rolling Stone. He recently contributed the Foreword to the National Geographic book, Eyewitness to History.

In recent years he has lectured widely in the United States (Smithsonian, Library of Congress, Woodrow Wilson Center) and overseas on the millennium, the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Ottomans at Vienna, citing their relevance to modern issues.

He has been a fellow at the American Academy in Rome,a fellow at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress and a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

Born in New York in 1941, he was raised in Washington, D.C. and attended the University of North Carolina on a Morehead Scholarship where he earned his B.A. in philosophy. At UNC he was an All South soccer player and after forty-two years still holds the single game scoring record for the university. (5 goals against N.C. State, October 18, 1962.) He attended Oxford University for his junior year.

Reston was an assistant to U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Steward Udall, 1964-65. U.S. Army, 1965-68. Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of North Carolina, 1971-81. Newsweek, PBS, and BBC candidate to be the first writer on the NASA space shuttle.

Married, with three children.

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