James Reston Jr.

James Reston Jr. (March 8, 1941 – July 19, 2023) was an American journalist, documentarian and author of political and historical fiction and non-fiction. He wrote about the Vietnam War, the Jonestown Massacre, civil rights, the impeachment of Richard Nixon, and the September 11 attacks.

Early life 
Reston was born in Manhattan, New York City. His father James "Scotty" Reston was an editor of the New York Times. His mother, Sarah Jane "Sally" Fulton, was a journalist, photographer, writer, and publisher who joined her husband on foreign assignments in Europe and Asia during World War II. His maternal grandfather, William J. Fulton, served two terms as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Illinois.

Reston's family moved to Washington, D.C. when he was two years old. He attended the St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. He earned his B.A. in philosophy in 1963 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 still retains the single-game scoring record for the university—five goals against North Carolina State University on October 18, 1962. He attended Oxford University during his junior year.

Career 
Reston was an assistant to and speechwriter for U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall from 1964 to 1965. He was a reporter for the Chicago Daily News from 1964 to 1965. From 1965 to 1968, he served in the U.S. Army as an intelligence officer and sergeant. From 1971 to 1981, he was a lecturer in creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 1976 to 1977, he was a fiction reviewer for the Chronicle of Higher Education.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Reston wrote numerous pieces about amnesty for Vietnam deserters, people who had left the United States rather than serving in the war. This led to two books, both collection of essays, When Can I Come Home, in 1972 and The Amnesty of John David Herndon in 1973. Reston said, "Now as a veteran against the war, I gravitated to the issue of amnesty for Vietnam war resisters, no doubt because emotionally I sympathized deeply with their plight and their decision in contrast to my own course."

From 1976 to 1977, Reston was David Frost's Watergate adviser for the historic Nixon interviews. Reston's book about the interviews, The Conviction of Richard Nixon, was the inspiration for Peter Morgan's 2006 play Frost/Nixon, in which the character Jim Reston is the narrator. It was made into a film in 2008, also called Frost/Nixon.

Reston's articles appeared in American Heritage, American Theatre, George, Esquire, National Geographic, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Omni, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Saturday Review, Time, Vanity Fair, and Washington Post Magazine.

His works of both fiction and non-fiction cover a wide range of historical and political topics. In 1985, Reston was the Newsweek, PBS, and BBC candidate to be the first writer in space on the NASA space shuttle. That program was scrapped after the Challenger accident in January 1986. On May 23, 1994, Time magazine published his cover story on the impact of the Shoemaker Levy 9 comet into Jupiter.

Reston wrote four plays which were all stage adaptations of his books —Sherman the Peacemaker premiered at the Playmakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1979, and was an outgrowth of his book, Sherman's March and Vietnam; Jonestown Express, based on his 1981 book Our Father Who Art in Hell, premiered with the Trinity Square Repertory Company in 1982; Galileo's Torch was adapted from his biography of Galileo and Galileo: A Life was staged in seven separate productions between 2014 and 2017; and Luther's Trumpet is an adaptation of his 2016 book, Luther's Fortress, and premiered in September 2018.

In 2005, Reston tried to stop production of Ridley Scott's film Kingdom of Heaven, claiming half of the script was based on the first part of his book Warriors of God. Reston's book was previously optioned by Phoenix Pictures, who had unsuccessfully pitched the concept to Scott as a potential project. Reston said, "They have built this film on the back of my intellectual property. They just read the first hundred pages and saw it has these great characters and a fantastic battle."

In 2016, Reston's 1977 book, The Innocence of Joan Little: A Southern Mystery, was optioned by Paulist Productions to possibly develop as a limited series.

Reston was a Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C., from 1994 to 1995, and a Global Fellow from October 2002 to December 2022. He was also fellow at the American Academy in Rome. In 2011, he was a resident scholar at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.

Professional affiliations 
Reston was a member of the Authors Guild, the Authors League of America, the Dramatists Guild of America, and PEN.

Personal life
Reston married Denise Brender Leary on June 12, 1971, in Hume, Virginia, at Fiery Run, the Restons' cabin. She received a law degree from Duke University and is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Milton Leary of the Bronx. They lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and had three children: Maeve, Hillary Reston, and Devin. As of 2017, Reston lived at Martha's Vineyard.

Reston's book Fragile Innocence,  A Father's Memoir of His Daughter's Courageous Journey (2006) is the story of his daughter Hillary's experience with a debilitative viral brain infection.

James Reston Jr. died from pancreatic cancer in Chevy Chase, Maryland, on July 19, 2023, at age 82.

Awards 
In 1983, Reston received the Prix Italia and the Dupont–Columbia Award for radio documentary Father Cares: the Last of Jonestown on NPR. He received the Valley Forge Award for Sherman's March and Vietnam in 1985.

In popular culture
Reston's book The Conviction of Richard Nixon was developed into a play, Frost/Nixon that was, in turn, developed into a film with the same title. Reston is depicted in the 2008 film Frost/Nixon 
by Sam Rockwell.

Reston developed a theory that Lee Harvey Oswald's target was Texas Governor John Connally, not President John F. Kennedy.

Publications

Novels
 To Defend, to Destroy (1971) 
 The Knock at Midnight (1975) 
 The 19th Hijacker: A Novel of 9/11, 2021

Nonfiction books 

 When Can I Come Home (1972)
 The Amnesty of John David Herndon (1973) 
 Perfectly Clear: Nixon from Whittier to Watergate, Quadrangle (1973) 
 The Innocence of Joan Little: A Southern Mystery (1977), 
 Our Father Who Art in Hell: The Life and Death of Jim Jones (1981) 
 Sherman's March and Vietnam (1985) 
 The Lone Star: The Life of John Connally (1989) 
 Collision at Home Plate: The Lives of Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti (1991) 
 Galileo: A Life (1994) 
 The Last Apocalypse: Europe in the Year 1000 A.D. (1998) 
 Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade (2001) 
 Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors (2005) 
 Fragile Innocence: A Father's Memoir of His Daughter's Courageous Journey (2006) 
 The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews (2007) 
 Defenders of the Faith: Charles V, Suleyman the Magnificent, and the Battle for Europe, 1520–1536 (2009) 
 The Accidental Victim: JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Real Target in Dallas (2013) 
 Luther's Fortress: Martin Luther and His Reformation Under Siege (2015) 
 A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial (2017) 
 The Impeachment Diary: Eyewitness to the Removal of a President (2019).

Plays 
 Sherman, the Peacemaker: A Play in Two Acts (1979)
 Jonestown Express, a play (1984)
 Galileo's Torch (2014)
 Luther's Trumpet (2018)

Radio 
 "Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown" (NPR, 1981)
 "Bush Administration Misuses the Word 'Caliphate (NPR, 2005)
 "Political Stem-Cell Debate Delays Medical Progress" (NPR, 2006)
 "Impeachment: The View from 1974" (NPR, 2019)

Television 
 88 Seconds in Greensboro (PBS Frontline, 1983)
 The Real Stuff (PBS Frontline,1987)
 The Mission of Discovery (PBS Frontline, 1988)
 Betting on the Lottery (PBS Frontline,1990)

Articles 

 "Vietnamize at Home", The New York Times (April 10, 1971)
 "Is Nuremberg Coming Back to Haunt Us?" The Saturday Review (July 18, 1970)
 "Universal Amnesty", New Republic (February 5, 1972)
 "Needed: A Grand Reconciliation: Not a Determination of Who Was More Moral on the War." Newsday (September 3, 1974)
 "Limited Amnesty: Not Easy: The President Gave Himself a Difficult Job" The New York Times (September 8, 1974)
 "Real Amnesty Would be Good for America" Newsday (March 31, 1975)
"The Joan Little Case." The New York Times Magazine (April 6, 1975)
 "On Carter's Amnesty and Pardon Views" The New York Times (October 2, 1976)
 “Southern Justice and the Case of Joan Little” The New York Times (January 6, 1978)
 "The Breaking of Richard Nixon" Playboy (April 1978)
 "The Jonestown Papers." (Cover story). New Republic. (April 25, 1981)
 "Opinion: Meet the Program Past." The New York Times (June 27, 1981)
 "Reagan and Monroe." The New York Times (March 14, 1982)
 "A Matter of Honor," The New York Times (April 7, 1982)
 "Mission to a Mind" OMNI (1984)
 "Invitation to a Poisoning," Vanity Fair (February 1985)
 "United States Commission on Civil Rights: We Shall Undermine." Rolling Stone (March 13, 1986)
 “Collision Course." (Cover Story) Time (May 23, 1994)
 "The Persistence of Guilt. American Theatre. (January 1995)
 "The Monument Glut. The New York Times Magazine. (September 10, 1995)
 "Orion: Where Stars Are Born." National Geographic. (December 1995)
 "Opinion: Failing the 1869 Test." The New York Times (January 9, 1999)
 "Be Christina or Die." Christian History (1999)
 "Frost, Nixon, and Me." Smithsonian.(January 2009)
 "A Prophet in His Time." American Theatre (March 2002)
 "When Generosity Is Medically Necessary." The New York Times. (August 7, 2002)
 “Jesse James and Me.” Smithsonian (October 2007)
 "Pointed Questions." Wilson Quarterly. (2012)
 "Correcting JFK Mythology on his Death" USA Today (November 13, 2013)
 "Induct Pete Rose into Hall of Fame: Column" USA Today (March 27, 2014)
 "Opinion: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Three Southern Villains." Newsweek (February 15, 2015)
 “Clark and Pritchett: A Comparison of Two Notorious Southern Lawmen.” Southern Cultures (Winter 2016)
 "The Novelist’s Event: Fact, Fiction, and a Writer’s Search for a Universal Subject." Georgia Review (2018)
 "Opinion: Another Impeachable Offense." The New York Times. (May 6, 2019)
 To Heal a Nation': Creating the Vietnam Wall" American Heritage (June 2021)
 "Remembering Flight 93: 'Okay. Let's Roll American Heritage. (September/October 2021)

References

External links

Interview at the 2006 National Book Festival, Library of Congress

1941 births
2023 deaths
20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American historians
21st-century American male writers
American biographers
American male biographers
American male dramatists and playwrights
American male non-fiction writers
American political writers
Deaths from cancer in Maryland
Deaths from pancreatic cancer
North Carolina Tar Heels men's soccer players
Writers from New York City
Soccer players from Washington, D.C.
St. Albans School (Washington, D.C.) alumni
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty