Born to a journalist father and concert pianist mother in 1931 Manhattan, Haynes Johnson grew up with a love of books instilled in him from day one. As a child, he would read his father’s articles on South Pacific battles and events as World War II unfolded before him. His profound love of history also finds its roots in Johnson’s close-knit family. Johnson’s grandmother mesmerized him and his siblings with her stories of growing up in the South during Reconstruction, in addition to his great-great-grandfather’s narratives of his life during the American Revolution. Johnson graduated from University of Missouri in 1952 with degree in journalism. He served in U.S. Army in Korea from 1952 to 1955, becoming first lieutenant, after which he earned a master's in American history from University of Wisconsin-Madison. His reporting career began at the Wilmington News-Journal, and in 1957, Johnson moved to Washington Star working as reporter, rewriteman, assistant city editor, and national assignments reporter. In 1966, Johnson claimed the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for articles on Selma civil rights demonstrations. Johnson continued to serve as Washington Post national correspondent assistant managing editor (1973-77), and columnist (1977-94). In addition to his own writing, he taught journalism at Princeton (1975, 1978), Berkeley (1990), and George Washington University (1994-96); since 1998 Johnson has held Knight Chair at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland. He has appeared as television commentator on Washington Week in Review (1967-94), The Today Show (1979-80), and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer (1994- ). Johnson's books include Dusk at the Mountain: The Negro, the Nation, and the Capital (1963), The Bay of Pigs: The Leaders' Story of Brigade 2506 (1964, with Manuel Artime, Jose Perez San Roman, Erneido Oliva, and Enrique Ruiz-Williams), Fulbright: The Dissenter (1968, with Bernard M. Gwertzman), The Unions (1972, with Nick Kotz), Lyndon (1973, with Richard Harwood), The Working White House (1975), In the Absence of Power: Governing America (1980), The Landing (novel, with Howard Simons, 1986), Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years (1991), Divided We Fall: Gambling with History in the Nineties (1994), The System (1996, with David S. Broder), and The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years (2001).
• Dusk at the Mountain: The Negro, the Nation, and the Capital
(1963)
• Fulbright: The Dissenter (1968)
• The Unions (1972)
• Lyndon (1973)
• The Bay of Pigs: The Leaders' Story of Brigade 2506 (1974)
• The Working White House (1975)
• In the Absence of Power: Governing America(1980)
• The Landing (1986)
• Divided We Fall: Gambling with History in the Nineties (1994)
• The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point
(1996)
• The Best of Times: the Boom and Bust Era of America Before and
After Everything Changed (2002)
• Sleepwalking Through History: American in the Reagan Years
(2003)
• On the Waterfront:
The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Articles That
Inspired the Classic Film andTransformed the New York Harbor
(2005)
• The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism (2005)
