John M. Barry

BIO

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 more than twenty awards. In 2005 the National Academy of Sciences 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 2006 the National Academy also invited him to give its annual 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's latest book is Roger Williams and The Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty. Two fault lines have divided America throughout our history: how we define the relationship between church and state and between the individual and the state. This book explores the genesis of those fault lines as reflected both in the history which led to the First Amendment and the development of the modern idea of freedom. It is an intellectual history, but that history is not of abstruse theory. It is a story of power, revolution, the beheading of a king, and the emergence of the ideas of separation of church and state and of individual liberty. And its characters include not only Roger Williams and John Winthrop but Francis Bacon, Edward Coke, the greatest jurist in English history and the man who said, "The house of every man is as his castle," John Milton, and Oliver Cromwell. And it is as relevant as the headlines about school prayer and whether the United States is a Christian nation.
Two of Barry's book have involved him in policy-making. Because of his influenza book, he has advised both the Bush and Obama administrations on pandemic preparedness and response, and he has worked with other federal, state, United Nations, and World Health Organization officials on influenza, water-related disasters, and risk communication. A member of advisory boards at M.I.T’s Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the only non-scientist on a federal government Infectious Disease Board of Experts, he also serves on the board of the Society of American Historians and American Heritage Rivers.

Also, after Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana Congressional delegation asked him to chair a bipartisan working group on flood control. In 2007 a Democratic governor appointed him to both the Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Authority East, which oversees 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. In 2009 a Republican governor reappointed him to both positions.

The National Academy of Sciences has recognized his expertise in these different areas, inviting Barry to give not only the 2006 Wolman Lecture on water resources, but also the keynote speech at its first international scientific meeting on pandemic influenza. He has been keynote speaker at such varied events as a White House Conference on the Mississippi Delta and an International Congress on Respiratory Viruses, and he has given talks in such venues as the National War College, the Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard Business School, and elsewhere. He is co-originator of Riversphere, a $100 million center being developed by Tulane University; it will be the first facility in the world dedicated to comprehensive river research.

His articles have appeared in such scientific journals as Nature and Journal of Infectious Disease as well as in lay publications ranging from Sports Illustrated to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fortune, Time, Newsweek, and Esquire. A frequent guest on every broadcast network in the US, he has appeared on such shows as NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's World News, and NPR's All Things Considered, and on such foreign media as the BBC and Al Jazeera. He has also served as a consultant for Sony Pictures and contributed to award-winning television documentaries.

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.

Before becoming a writer, Barry coached football at the high school, small college, and major college levels. Currently Distinguished Scholar at the Center for Bioenvironmental Research of Tulane and Xavier Universities, he lives in New Orleans.