John M. Barry

REVIEWS (see more reviews on my "works" page):

POWER PLAYS: POLITICS, FOOTBALL, AND OTHER BLOOD SPORTS

"An overwhelmingly powerful story-- one of the best political books in several years."
"The quality of Barry's reporting makes most newspaper work seem like the funny pages... Scenes dance on the page as though blocked out by Frank Capra."
"a riveting portrait... Brilliant."
"If you want to really understand the heart and mind of a professional or Olympic-caliber athlete, read this book."
RISING TIDE

"Breathtaking... A big ambitious book that is not only engrossing and informative but has the potential to change the way we think."
"This is a book that I suspect will be recalled as one of the best books of the decade... To that hypothetical list of books that you intend to have when you are marooned on a desert island, please add Rising Tide."
THE GREAT INFLUENZA

"Monumental... powerfully intelligent... not just a masterful narrative but also an authoritative and disturbing morality tale."
"Terrifying... The lessons of 1918 could not be more relevant."
"Compelling and brilliant..."

BIO

I was born in... Nah, let's not start that far back. Let's just say after I dropped 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 more than twenty awards. In 2005 the National Academies of Science named The Great Influenza, a study of the 1918 pandemic, the year’s outstanding book on science or medicine, and the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Pathogens gave Barry its 2005 “September Eleventh Award.” The National Academies also invited him to give the 2006 Abel Wolman Distinguished Lecture; he is the only non-scientist ever to give that lecture. 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.

Barry is currently nearing completion of his next book, tentatively titled The Creation of the American Soul, which focuses on the development of the separation of church and state in the 17th century, and the tension between John Winthrop's "cittie upon a hill" and conformity in Massachusetts and the freedom of religion and individualism in Roger Williams's Rhode Island.

Barry serves on advisory boards at M.I.T’s Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and on a federal government Infectious Disease Board of Experts. He has advised federal, state, and World Health Organization officials on influenza, crisis management, and risk communication. After Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana Congressional delegation asked him to chair a bipartisan working group on flood control, and in 2007 he was appointed to both the Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Authority East, which oversees six levee districts in the metropolitan New Orleans area, and the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which develops and implements the hurricane protection plan for the state. The National Academies of Science has recognized his expertise in entirely different areas, inviting him to give not only the 2006 Wolman Lecture on water resources, but also the keynote speech at an international scientific meeting on influenza. He has been keynote speaker at a White House Conference on the Mississippi Delta and he has lectured at the National War College, Harvard Business School, and in many similar venues. He is also co-originator of Riversphere, a $100 million center being developed by Tulane University which will be the first facility in the world dedicated to comprehensive river research.

A frequent guest on every broadcast network in the US and several internationally, he has appeared on shows from NBC's Meet the Press to NPR's All Things Considered, as well as on such foreign media as the BBC. Barry has also contributed to award-winning television documentaries, and has written for publications ranging from Journal of Infectious Disease to Sports Illustrated, and including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fortune, Time, Newsweek, and Esquire.

In addition to formal awards, his books have received 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.

In addition to serving on advisory boards at Johns Hopkins and MIT, he is on the board of the Society of American Historians, American Heritage Rivers, and the advisory board for the National Mississippi River Museum in Dubuque. Before becoming a writer, Barry coached football at the high school, small college, and major college levels. Currently Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Center for Bioenvironmental Research of Tulane and Xavier Universities, he lives in New Orleans.