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John M. Barry
| gender |
male |
| website |
http://johnmbarry.com/ |
| genre |
Nonfiction, History
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about this author
I was born in... Nah, let's not start that far back. Let's just say after dropping out of graduate school in history I became a football coach-- in fact, the first story I ever sold was to a coaching magazine, about a way to change blocking assignments at the line of scrimmage, and I was on the staff of a guy who was named national coach of the year. I quit coaching to write, first as a Washington journalist covering economics and national politics, then I finally began doing what I always intended and wanted to do: write books. Two of those books have in turn led me into active involvement in a couple of policy areas. Anyway, here's the more formal version of my bio:
John M. Barry is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author whose books have won more than twenty awards. In 2005 the National Academies of Science named The Great Influenza, a study of the 1918 pandemic, the year’s outstanding book on science or medicine, and the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Pathogens gave Barry its 2005 “September Eleventh Award” for his contributions to pandemic preparedness. In 2006 the National Academies also invited him to give its annual Abel Wolman Distinguished Lecture; he is the only non-scientist ever to give that lecture. In 1998 Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, won the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians for the year’s best book of American history.
Barry is currently nearing completion of his next book, tentatively titled The Creation of the American Soul, which focuses on the development of the separation of church and state in the 17th century, as manifested in John Winthrop's "cittie upon a hill" and the concomitant enforced conformity in Massachusetts as opposed to the freedom of religion and individualism in Roger Williams's Rhode Island.
Both The Great Influenza and Rising Tide have proven influential in recent years. Barry was invited by the Bush and Obama administrations to advise on pandemic preparedness and response, and he has advised other federal, state, United Nations, and World Health Organization officials on influenza, water-related disasters, crisis management, and risk communication. A member of advisory boards at M.I.T’s Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Barry was also the only non-scientist on a federal government Infectious Disease Board of Experts.
After Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana Congressional delegation asked him to chair a bipartisan working group on flood control. In 2007 a Democratic governor appointed him to both the Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Authority East, which oversees six levee districts in the metropolitan New Orleans area, and the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which develops and implements the hurricane protection plan for the state. In 2009 a Republican governor reappointed him to both positions.
The National Academies of Science has recognized his expertise in entirely different areas, inviting him to give not only the 2006 Wolman Lecture on water resources, but also the keynote speech at its first international scientific meeting on influenza. Similarly, he has been keynote speaker at both a White House Conference on the Mississippi Delta and an International Congress on Respiratory Viruses; he has spoken at the National War College, the Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard Business School, and many similar venues. He is also co-originator of Riversphere, a $100 million center being developed by Tulane University which will be the first facility in the world dedicated to comprehensive river research.
His articles have appeared in such scientific journals as Nature and Journal of Infectious Disease as well as in lay publications ranging from Sports Illustrated to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fortune, Time, Newsweek, and Esquire. A frequent guest on every broadca
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