Jay Winik
{{Short description|American author and historian}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Jay Winik
| image = File:Jay Winik by Carl Caruso, 2015.jpg
| imagesize = 150px
| alt =
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1957|02|08}}
| birth_place = New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
| occupation = Writer and historian
| alma_mater = Yale College
| notableworks = April 1865, The Great Upheaval, 1944
}}
Jay Winik (born February 8, 1957) is a New York Times best-selling author and American historian who is best known for his book April 1865: The Month That Saved America.[https://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/22/reviews/010422.22byrdlt.html The Month That Was | New York Times]
Education and early career
Winik is an honors graduate of Yale College. He also holds an M.Sc. in economics from the London School of Economics with distinction and a Ph.D. from Yale University. He played on the Yale tennis team and was an editor of the Yale Daily News.April 1865, HarperCollins, 2006, P.S. Section{{Cite web |date=2016-03-21 |title=Jay Winik - 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History |url=http://jaywinik.com/index.php/about/jay_winik/ |access-date=2023-11-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160321184933/http://jaywinik.com/index.php/about/jay_winik/ |archive-date=2016-03-21 }}
He had a brief career in the U.S. government's foreign policy, involving civil wars around the globe, from the former Yugoslavia to El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Cambodia, including helping to create the United Nations plan to end the Cambodian Civil War. In 1991, he took up writing history full-time.The Great Upheaval, HarperCollins, 2008, P.S. Section
Career
The Baltimore Sun has called Winik “one of the nation's leading public historians” and he is currently the [http://www.cfr.org/experts/world/jay-winik/b21746 inaugural Historian-in-Residence] at the Council on Foreign Relations.Baltimore Sun, 10-14-2007 He is the author of the highly acclaimed, number one bestseller April 1865 (2001), which also became a History Channel documentary and a stage production, both of which feature him.{{Cite web |date=2016-03-21 |title=Jay Winik - 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History |url=http://jaywinik.com/index.php/about/jay_winik/ |access-date=2023-11-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160321184933/http://jaywinik.com/index.php/about/jay_winik/ |archive-date=2016-03-21 }} In 2007 Winik published the New York Times' bestselling The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, which both USA Today and The Financial Times picked as one of their “Best Books of the Year.”Amazon.com, The Great Upheaval, reviews section; Gordon Wood, The New York Review of Books, November 8, 2007 Winik's latest book is 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History, also a NYT best-seller.{{cite web|url=http://books.simonandschuster.com/1944/Jay-Winik/9781439114087|title=1944|work=simonandschuster.com|access-date=3 March 2015}} It has stimulated a broad national conversation about morality and foreign policy.
Winik has been read by political leaders including Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Harry Reid, and Mitch McConnell as well as Chief Justice John Roberts and numerous celebrities.Sheryl Gay Stolberg, The New York Times, December 25, 2008; The Washington Post, Reliable Source, September 28, 2007 Winik appears on the first page of George W. Bush's presidential memoir Decision Points, discussing the craft of writing history with the president. Just after the September 11 attacks, Bush was seen carrying April 1865 in the White House.{{Cite web|url=http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/10/bush.readinglist.tm/|title=What the president reads|last=Dickerson|first=John F.|date=January 10, 2005|website=www.cnn.com|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2017-11-15}}
In 2017 in the New York Times, renowned actor Tom Hanks read an excerpt from April 1865 to Maureen Dowd about slavery and race relations.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/style/tom-hanks-uncommon-type-harvey-weinstein-donald-trump.html|title=Hollywood's Most Decent Fella on Weinstein, Trump and History|last=Dowd|first=Maureen|date=2017-10-11|work=The New York Times|access-date=2017-11-15|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}} He told the NYT that Winik's April 1865 is on his nightstand.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/books/review/tom-hanks-by-the-book.html|title=Tom Hanks: By the Book|work=The New York Times|access-date=2017-11-15|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}} Peggy Noonan also told the NYT that 1944 is on her nightstand.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/books/review/peggy-noonan-by-the-book.html|title=Peggy Noonan: By the Book|date=2015-12-17|work=The New York Times|access-date=2017-11-15|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}
Articles and commentary
Winik's articles and history book reviews have been published in the New York Times, Atlantic magazine, Time magazine, Newsweek, National Review, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, to which he has been a frequent contributor.Jay Winik, The Wall Street Journal, “We Watched Andre Agassi Grow," September 6, 2006 He has appeared on national broadcasts such as The Today Show, Fresh Air and Morning Edition with Scott Simon, CNN, Good Morning America, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He has provided historical commentary for documentaries on the History Channel and PBS as well as C-SPAN, and was the Presidential Historian for Fox News for Barack Obama's and Donald Trump's 2017 inaugurations and Senator Ted Kennedy's funeral.
In 2002 he was a regular on the History Channel weekly show, The History Center. He was a principal history commentator for the History Channel special Pearl Harbor: 24 Hours After. In 2013, he was a historical advisor to National Geographic and the consulting historian for their six-part series, The 1980s: The Decade That Made Us, which aired in over 100 countries.
In a New York Times op-ed, Winik correctly predicted a long guerrilla struggle in Iraq, while Time magazine noted that Winik's April 1865 was a powerful reminder about how a war's end is every bit as important as how or why it had begun.Jay Winik, The New York Times, "A Brief History of the Resistance", December 16, 2003; John Dickerson, Time magazine, January 17, 2005.
Public service
Winik serves as a trustee or advisory board member on a number of nonprofit boards, including for American Heritage Magazine, the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, Ford's Theatre Society, and its Lincoln Legacy Project, The Civil War Preservation Trust, the Lincoln Forum, the Washington Tennis and Education Foundation, and the Potomac School, as well as the Governing Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities.National Endowment for the Humanities Website, http://www.neh.org He also currently serves on the board of trustees for The American Folk Life CenterAmerican Folk Life Center Website, https://www.loc.gov/folklife/ of the Library of Congress, as well as the Veterans History ProjectVeterans History Project Website, https://www.loc.gov/vets/ of the Library of Congress.
Memberships
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an elected Fellow of the Society of American Historians. Appointed by the President, he is on the board of trustees of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.[https://www.ushmm.org/information/press/press-releases/president-trump-appoints-new-council-member-1 United States Holocaust Memorial: Press Release April 30th, 2020: President Trump appoints new council member]
Works
{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?164163-1/april-1865-month-saved-america Presentation by Winik on April 1865, April 12, 2001], C-SPAN| video2 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?164644-1/april-1865-month-saved-america Booknotes interview with Winik on April 1865, July 29, 2001], C-SPAN| video3 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?200714-5/the-great-upheaval Washington Journal interview with Winik on The Great Upheaval, September 14, 2007], C-SPAN| video4 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?327596-14/jay-winik-1944 Presentation by Winik on 1944, September 5, 2015], C-SPAN}}
- {{cite book| title=The Great Upheaval|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nuLtNUDO7l4C|date=13 October 2009|publisher=HarperCollins|isbn=978-0-06-182671-9}}
- April 1865: The Month That Saved America, G.K. Hall, 2001, {{ISBN|9780783895819}}; {{cite book| title=April 1865|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gUfZxiau_fgC|date=16 November 2010|publisher=HarperCollins|isbn=978-0-06-202920-1}}
- 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History, Simon & Schuster, 2015, {{ISBN|9781439114087}}.{{Cite news |last=Ward |first=Geoffrey |title=Roosevelt and Auschwitz |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/roosevelt-and-auschwitz-1442609477 |access-date=2024-04-17 |work=WSJ |language=en-US}}
- 1861: The Lost Peace, Grand Central Publishing, 2025, {{ISBN|978-1538735121}}.
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- {{C-SPAN|44360}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Winik, Jay}}
Category:20th-century American historians
Category:21st-century American historians
Category:21st-century American male writers
Category:Writers from New Haven, Connecticut
Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics
Category:20th-century American male writers