Douglas Brinkley (born December 14, 1960) is an American author and a professor of history at Rice University. He previously was a professor of history at Tulane University, where he also served as director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center for American Civilization. Brinkley is the history commentator for CBS News and a contributing editor to the magazine Vanity Fair. He joined Rice and the James Baker Institute for Public Policy on July 1, 2007.
Easton Press Douglas Brinkley books
Witness To America - co-authored with Stephen Ambrose - 2001The Wilderness Warrior - signed first edition - 2009
American Moonshot - signed first edition - 2019
Historian Douglas Brinkley
Brinkley was born in Atlanta, Georgia. His parents were high school teachers. Raised in Perrysburg, Ohio, he earned his B.A. from Ohio State University (1982), and his M.A. (1983) and Ph.D. (1989) from Georgetown University in U.S. Diplomatic History. He has taught at Princeton University, the U.S. Naval Academy, and Hofstra University, and he has earned several honorary doctorates for his contributions to American letters including one from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
During the early 1990s, Brinkley taught American Arts and Politics out of Hofstra aboard the Majic Bus, a roving transcontinental classroom, from which emerged the book, The Majic Bus: An American Odyssey (1993). In 1993, he left Hofstra to teach at the University of New Orleans, where he taught the class again using two natural-gas fueled buses. According to the Associated Press, "...if you can't tour the United States yourself, the next best thing is to go along with Douglas Brinkley aboard The Majic Bus."
Brinkley worked closely with his mentor, historian Stephen E. Ambrose, then director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans. Ambrose chose Brinkley to become director of the Eisenhower Center, a post he held for five years before moving to Tulane University.
Career
During his time in Georgetown, Brinkley worked as the night manager at Second Story Books in DC. During the early 1990s, Brinkley taught American Arts and Politics for Hofstra aboard the Majic Bus, a roving transcontinental classroom, from which emerged the book The Majic Bus: An American Odyssey (1993). In 1993, he left Hofstra to teach at the University of New Orleans, where he taught the class again using two natural-gas fueled buses. According to the Associated Press, "...if you can't tour the United States yourself, the next best thing is to go along with Douglas Brinkley aboard The Majic Bus."
Brinkley worked closely with his mentor, historian Stephen E. Ambrose, then director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans. Ambrose chose Brinkley to become director of the Eisenhower Center, a post he held for five years before moving to Tulane University.
Brinkley's first book was Jean Monnet: The Path to European Unity (1992). His second was Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years (1992). He then co-edited a monograph series with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and William vanden Heuvel in the 1990s. Brinkley also edited a volume on Dean Acheson and the Making of US Foreign Policy with Paul H. Nitze (1993). In 1999, he published The Unfinished Presidency about Jimmy Carter's active and influential post-presidency.
Brinkley is the literary executor for his late friend, the journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson. He is also the editor of a three-volume collection of Thompson's letters. Brinkley is also the authorized biographer for Beat generation author Jack Kerouac, having edited Kerouac's diaries as Windblown World (2004).
In 2004, Brinkley released Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, about U.S. Senator John Kerry's prior military service and anti-war activism during the Vietnam War. The 2004 documentary movie Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry is loosely based on Brinkley's book. Brinkley also wrote the Atlantic Monthly cover story of December 2003 on Kerry.
Brinkley's book The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast is a record of the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast. The book won the 2007 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. He also served as the primary historian for Spike Lee's documentary about Hurricane Katrina, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. Critic Nancy Franklin in The New Yorker noted that Brinkley made up a "large part" of the film's "conscience."
Brinkley's biography of Walter Cronkite, Cronkite was published in 2012. It was also selected as a Washington Post Book of the Year.
Brinkley and Johnny Depp were nominated for a Grammy for their co-authoring of the liner notes to the documentary: Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. He also co-edited with Johnny Depp the long lost novel of Woody Guthrie titled House of Earth.
Douglas Brinkley books in order
Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal (1992 - With Townsend Hoopes)
Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, 1953-71 (1992)
The Majic Bus: An American Odyssey (1993)
The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967 (1997)
Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 (1997)
FDR and the Creation of the U.N. (1997 - With Townsend Hoopes)
American Heritage History (1998)
The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House (1999)
Witness to America (1999 - With Stephen Ambrose)
Fear and Loathing in America: the Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976 (2000)
Rosa Parks (2000)
The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today (2002 - With Stephen Ambrose)
Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and A Century of Progress, 1903-2003 (2003)
Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War (2004)
Voices of Valor: D-Day, June 6, 1944 (2004 - With Ronald J. Dretz)
Windblown World: the Journals of Jack Kerouac, 1947-1954 (2004)
The World War II Memorial: a Grateful Nation Remembers (2004)
The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day, and the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion (2005)
Parish Priest: Father Michael McGivney and American Catholicism (2006 - With Julie M. Fenster)
The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2006)
The Reagan Diaries (2007)
Road Novels 1957-1960 (2007)
Gerald R. Ford (2007)
The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (2009)
The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960 (2011)
Cronkite (2012)
Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America (2016)
American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race (2019)
Source and additional information: Douglas Brinkley