Kai Bird

Bird was born in 1951 in Eugene, Oregon. His father was a U.S. Foreign Service officer, and Bird spent his childhood in Jerusalem, Beirut, Dhahran, Cairo, and Mumbai. His father named him after Kai-Yu Hsu, a refugee from China he met at the University of Oregon.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h9FZaNi5ToYC|title=Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978|last=Bird|first=Kai|date=April 20, 2010|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=9781439171608|language=en}}

Bird finished high school in 1969 at Kodaikanal International School in Tamil Nadu, South India. He received his B.A. in history from Carleton College in 1973 and an M.S. in journalism from Northwestern University in 1975. Bird now lives in New York City with his wife, Susan Goldmark, a retired country director of the World Bank. They have a son, Joshua.{{cite web|url=http://corbinhiar.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/kai-bird-the-nations-foreign-editor/|title=Kai Bird: The Nation's Foreign Editor|last=Hiar|first=Corbin|date=April 24, 2009|work=Hiar learning|publisher=Wordpress|access-date=April 24, 2010}}

In January 2017, Bird was appointed Executive Director and Distinguished Lecturer at CUNY Graduate Center's Leon Levy Center for Biography in New York City.{{cite web|url=https://www.gc.cuny.edu/News/All-News/Detail?id=38068|title=Detail}}

After graduating from Carleton, Bird received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which enables students to do a year of independent study outside the United States. He used the fellowship to do a photojournalism project in Yemen. Two years later, his wife Goldmark was also awarded a Watson Fellowship, and the two of them spent 15 months as freelance journalists traveling through Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. "We filed weekly stories with papers like the Christian Science Monitor and Hong Kong's Far Eastern Economic Review," Bird said. "We hardly made any money, but we enjoyed what we were doing."{{cite web|url=http://www.slowdog.com/journEx_KaiBird.html|archive-url=https://archive.today/20070609093750/http://www.slowdog.com/journEx_KaiBird.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=June 9, 2007|title=Slow Dog Studios|access-date=May 31, 2009}} Bird was an associate editor of The Nation magazine from 1978 to 1982 and then a columnist for the magazine.

Bird's biographical works include The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (Touchstone, 1998); The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment (Random House, 1992); and Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (1998), which he co-edited with Lawrence Lifschultz.

In April 2010 his book Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956–1978 was released by Scribner. It is a meld of memoir and history, fusing his early life in the Arab world with an account of the American experience in the Middle East.

The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames (Crown, 2014) is a biography of CIA officer Robert Ames, whose career focus was the Middle East. According to the book, Ames played a key role in starting the peace process that led to the Oslo accords between Israel and the PLO.Kai Bird: The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames. Crown, New York 2014, {{ISBN|978-0-307-88975-1}}, p.2{{Cite web |last=Drogin |first=Bob |date=May 16, 2014 |title=Review: 'Good Spy' scrutinizes Middle East CIA officer Robert Ames |url=https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-kai-bird-20140518-story.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140517150935/http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-kai-bird-20140518-story.html |archive-date=May 17, 2014 |access-date=January 8, 2024 |website=Los Angeles Times}} Ames perished in the April 18, 1983, truck bombing of the American embassy in Beirut.

In 2021, he published a biography of Jimmy Carter entitled The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.{{Cite web |last=Naftali |first=Timothy |date=June 15, 2021 |title=The Many Successes of Jimmy Carter — and His Ultimate Failure |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/books/review/kai-bird-the-outlier-jimmy-carter.html |url-access=limited |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210615090750/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/books/review/kai-bird-the-outlier-jimmy-carter.html |archive-date=June 15, 2021 |access-date=January 8, 2024 |website=The New York Times}}

Bird is a recipient of a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship (1973), an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship{{cite web|title=Kal Bird|url=https://aliciapatterson.org/users/kal-bird}} (1981), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1984),{{cite web|url=http://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/kai-bird/|title=John Simon Guggenheim Foundation - Kai Bird}} and a John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Grant for Research and Writing (1993–95). In 2001-2002 he was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Bird and co-author Martin J. Sherwin won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Knopf, 2005).{{cite news|last=Thompson|first=Bob|title=Arts Pulitzers Make History the Big Winner|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=April 18, 2006|access-date=March 24, 2011|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/17/AR2006041701774.html}} He and Sherwin also won the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award for their biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer. In 2008, they also won the Duff Cooper Prize.{{cite web|url=http://www.theduffcooperprize.org/past-duff-cooper-prize-winners|title=Past Winners of The Duff Cooper Prize|work=The Duff Cooper Prize|first=Orphans|last=Press|access-date=November 10, 2016|archive-date=September 12, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190912231809/http://www.theduffcooperprize.org/past-duff-cooper-prize-winners|url-status=dead}}

Crossing Mandelbaum Gate was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in the "Autobiography" category.{{cite web|url=http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/for_immediate_release_the_national_book_critics_circle_finalists_for_2010_a/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110126001808/http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/for_immediate_release_the_national_book_critics_circle_finalists_for_2010_a|url-status=dead|archive-date=January 26, 2011|title=National Book Critics Circle}}{{cite web|url=https://apps.carleton.edu/media_relations/press_releases/?story_id=1460421|title=Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist Kai Bird '73 to present opening convocation}}

In September 2016, he was the featured speaker at Carleton College's opening convocation in Northfield, Minnesota.

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• {{Official website|http://www.kaibird.com }}
• [http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/kai_bird Kai Bird's articles for The Nation]
• https://web.archive.org/web/20090105200954/http://slowdog.com/journEx_KaiBird.html
• [https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126163240 Audio interview with Kai Bird and excerpt from Crossing Mendelbaum Gate] at NPR
• {{C-SPAN|40868}}

{{PulitzerPrize BiographyorAutobiographyAuthors 2001–2025}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bird, Kai}}

Category:1951 births

Category:20th-century American biographers

Category:20th-century American male writers

Category:21st-century American biographers

Category:21st-century American male writers

Category:American columnists

Category:American male biographers

Category:Carleton College alumni

Category:CUNY Graduate Center faculty

Category:Kodaikanal International School alumni

Category:Living people

Category:Medill School of Journalism alumni

Category:Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners

Category:Watson Fellows

Category:Writers from Eugene, Oregon

Category:National Book Critics Circle Award winners