About the Author

James Reston Jr. (born 1941, New York City) is an American author and journalist. His father was the American journalist James Reston. Reston was raised in Washington, D.C. He earned his BA in philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) while on a Morehead Scholarship. 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. Reston was an assistant to U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall (1964-1965) and served in the U.S. Army (1965-1968) . He was a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina (1971-81) . Reston is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. and has been a fellow at the American Academy in Rome and a scholar in residence at the Library of Congress. Reston is the author of 13 books, three plays, and numerous articles in national magazines. His works of both fiction and non-fiction cover mostly 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, . His last three works, , and , have been translated into ten foreign languages. and have been optioned by Hollywood. Reston's articles have appeared in , and . 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.

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