Robert Draper

Draper attended Westchester High School in Houston, Texas. He is the grandson of Leon Jaworski, who served as a special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal.{{Cite web|url=https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/colonel-of-truth/amp/|title = Colonel of Truth|date = November 2003}} Draper was active in high school debate. He attended the University of Texas at Austin where he majored in the Plan II Honors program and wrote for the university newspaper The Daily Texan.{{cite book|url=https://www.austinchronicle.com/books/1999-05-14/521953/|author=Smith, Clay|title=Writer at Large|work=The Austin Chonicle|date=May 14, 1999}}

After graduation from the University of Texas at Austin, Draper wrote for the Austin Chronicle.

In 1991, Draper joined the staff of the Texas MonthlyClay Smith, "Writer-at-Large," The Austin Chronicle, May 14, 1999. where he worked along with Gregory Curtis, Jim Shahin, Joe Nick Patoski, Gary Cartwright, Evan Smith and the periodical publisher Michael Levy. In July 1992, Draper publishes his interview in Texas Monthly on Cormac McCarthy, who at that time became known for his novel All the Pretty Horses. In September 1996, Draper had relocated to Venice where he worked for four months for the Hadrian's Walls.

He was an editor of GQ magazine.[https://www.gq.com/contributor/robert-draper Robert Draper] GQ. Retrieved April 21, 2019.

In 2007, Draper became a contributing writer to National Geographic and in 2008 joined The New York Times Magazine.{{cite news|url=https://time4coffee.org/30-new-york-times-magazine-to-national-geographic-w-journalist-robert-draper/|author=Koppel, Andrea|title=30: Robert Draper: New York Times Magazine Writer-at-Large|website=time4coffee.org|date=September 24, 2018|accessdate=April 21, 2019}} As a writer for The New York Times, Draper had an exclusive interview with Wendy Davis, prior to her even becoming a politician.{{cite news|author=Nolan, Rachel|work=The New York Times|url=https://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/17/behind-the-cover-story-robert-draper-on-wendy-davis-and-the-challenge-of-biography/|title=Behind the Cover Story: Robert Draper on Wendy Davis and the Challenge of Biography|date=February 17, 2014|accessdate=April 21, 2019}} He moved to a staff position at the Times in 2022.https://www.nytco.com/press/robert-draper-joins-the-new-york-times-magazine/

As a journalist and editor he had met many known people, including novelists such as Stephen Harrigan, Mary Karr and Carol Dawson.

In 2019, Draper and Cédric Gerbehaye, a Belgian photographer, had traveled to Bolivia, to write about lithium.{{cite magazine|url=https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/02/silicon-valley-lithium-made-life-simpler-complicated/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190116111903/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/02/silicon-valley-lithium-made-life-simpler-complicated/|url-status=dead|archive-date=January 16, 2019|editor=Goldberg, Susan|title=How Silicon Valley has made life simpler—and more complex|magazine=National Geographic|date=February 2019}}

Draper's career as a writer dates back to 1990 when he wrote his first novel Armbrister. Back then, Kathy Robbins was his literary agent, who promised to find him a publisher, but failed to do so. During the same year. Draper had written Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History, which was read by Julia Null, wife of Evan Smith, and was published by Doubleday the same year. In 1994, Draper moved to Palacios, Texas for three months, where he wrote another novel, Under Mistletoe which, just like his Armbrister didn't get published.

Draper's literary success became apparent when he became an author of Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush, a chronicle of the Bush administration from 2001 to 2007. The New York Times reviewed the book, writing that it gives "the reader an intimate sense of the president’s personality and how it informs his decision making."{{cite news|author=Kakutani, Michiko|title=Bush Profiled: Big Ideas, Tiny Details|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/books/05kaku.html|work=The New York Times|date=September 5, 2007}} He has also written a novel Hadrian's Walls, published in 1999, which The New York Times called "deft and occasionally ingenious."{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/06/13/reviews/990613.13moslet.html|author=Moslet, Sara|title=Local Justice|work=The New York Times|date=June 13, 1999}}

In April 2012, Draper published Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives, which the Huffington Post described as "much-discussed and heavily-reported."{{cite news|url=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/robert-draper-anti-obama-campaign_n_1452899.html|title=Robert Draper Book: GOP's Anti-Obama Campaign Started Night Of Inauguration|author=Stein, Sam|date=April 25, 2012|work=HuffPost|accessdate=April 21, 2019}} Writing in the Wall Street Journal, ABC News senior political correspondent Jonathan Karl called the book "a refreshingly balanced account that captures the drama of one of Congress's most combative and maddeningly frustrating years in memory."{{cite news|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303592404577360833838004406|title=Partisan, and Proud of It|author=Karl, Jonathan|work=The Wall Street Journal|date=23 April 2012|accessdate=April 21, 2019}}

Draper was married to Meg Littleton in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

On November 16, 2016, fellow journalist Kirsten Powers announced her engagement to Draper.{{cite news|author=Lippman, Daniel|url=https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/15/playbook-birthday-robert-draper-244916|title=BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Robert Draper, author and writer for the N.Y. Times Magazine and National Geographic|work=Politico|agency=Capitol News Company|date=November 15, 2017|accessdate=April 21, 2019}}

{{Incomplete list|date=October 2016}}

• {{cite book|author=Draper, Robert|title=Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History|location=New York|publisher=Doubleday|year=1990|isbn=9780385260602}}
• Hadrian's walls, Knopf, 1999, {{ISBN|9780375403699}}
• {{cite book|author=Draper, Robert|title=Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush|year=2008|publisher=Free Press|isbn=978-0-7432-7729-7|url=https://archive.org/details/deadcertain00robe}}
• {{cite book|author=Draper, Robert|title=Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives|year=2012|publisher=Free Press|isbn=978-1-4516-4208-7}} 331 p.
• {{cite book|author=Draper, Robert|title=When the Tea Party Came to Town: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives' Most Combative, Dysfunctional, and Infuriating Term in Modern History|year=2013|publisher=Simon & Schuster|isbn=978-1-4516-4209-4}} 352 p.
• {{cite book|author=Draper, Robert|author2=Yader, David|title=Pope Francis and the New Vatican|publisher=National Geographic|year=2015|isbn=978-1-4262-1582-7}} 246 p.
• {{cite book|author=Draper, Robert|title=To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq|year=2020|publisher=Penguin Press|isbn=978-0-5255-6104-0}} 496 p.
• {{cite book|author=Draper, Robert|title=Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind|year=2022|publisher=Penguin Press|isbn=978-0-5933-0014-5}} 400 p.

• {{cite magazine|author=Draper, Robert|date=March 21, 2016|title=The go-between: the Mexican actress who dazzled El Chapo|department=A Reporter at Large|magazine=The New Yorker|volume=92|issue=6|pages=66–75|url=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/21/kate-del-castillo-sean-penn-and-el-chapo}} Kate del Castillo.

{{Reflist}}

{{commons category|Robert Draper}}

• [http://www.austinchronicle.com/books/1999-05-14/521953 Robert Draper Profile in the Austin Chronicle: " Writer at Large," May 14, 1999]
• [https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303592404577360833838004406 Jonathan Karl in The Wall Street Journal on Do Not Ask What Good We Do]
• [https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14162000 "Author Had Rare Access to Bush for 'Dead Certain' ". NPR Sep. 4, 2007.]
• [http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/kathleen-parker-fetes-brash-author-in-georgetown-home-hems-and-haws-about-eliot-spitzer_b72367 "Kathleen Parker Fetes 'Brash' Author in Georgetown Home, Hems and Haws about Eliot Spitzer". "Mediabistro" May 2, 2012.]

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Category:1959 births

Category:Living people

Category:American male journalists

Category:20th-century American journalists

Category:Place of birth missing (living people)

Category:The New York Times journalists

Category:The New Yorker people

Category:University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts alumni

Category:21st-century American journalists

Category:20th-century American male writers

Category:21st-century American male writers