J. Anthony Lukas was born to Elizabeth and Edwin Lukas inWhite Plains, New York. His mother was an actress and his unclePaul Lukas was anAcademy Award–winning actor. Lukas at first wanted to be an actor. After his mother committed suicide and his father's illness after her death, he was at the age of eight enrolled in the coeducationalPutney School inVermont. His younger brother,Christopher Lukas, born in 1935, is a television producer and writer.
Lukas was diagnosed withdepression in the late 1980s.[5] In an interview that followed the publication ofCommon Ground in 1985, he had given some hints about his frame of mind, linking it with his career as a writer:
All writers are, to one extent or another, damaged people. Writing is our way of repairing ourselves. In my own case, I was filling a hole in my life which opened at the age of eight, when my mother killed herself, throwing our family into utter disarray. My father quickly developedtuberculosis – psychosomatically triggered, the doctors thought – forcing him to seek treatment in an Arizonasanatorium. We sold our house and my brother and I were shipped off to boarding school. Effectively, from the age of eight, I had no family, and certainly no community. That's one reason the book worked: I wasn't just writing a book about busing. I was filling a hole in myself.[6]
Lukas won his firstPulitzer Prize in 1968 for "The Two Worlds of Linda Fitzpatrick" in the now-defunct award category of Local Investigative Specialized Reporting.[9] TheNew York Times article documented the life of a teenager from a wealthy,Greenwich, Connecticut-based family who became involved in drugs and thehippie movement before being bludgeoned to death in the basement of anEast Village tenement. Lukas was previously awarded aGeorge Polk Award in Local Reporting in 1967 for the story.[10]
"The Two Worlds of Linda Fitzpatrick", 1967,The New York Times article on the life and death of a teenager in the1960s counterculture — winner of thePulitzer Prize[9]
"The Barnyard Epithet and Other Obscenities: Notes on the Chicago Conspiracy Trial", 1970, a story on theChicago Seven, aka theChicago Eight
Don't Shoot, We Are Your Children!, 1971, a collection of stories about members of the1960s counterculture (including the Linda Fitzpatrick article). A section byKai Erikson —sociologist and professor ofAmerican studies atYale and editor ofThe Yale Review— challenged the view that there was a "generation gap" between the sixties generation and their parents generations, arguing that the sixties generation expressed overtly what previous generations had expressed covertly.
Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years, 1976, a book onRichard Nixon and theWatergate scandal, originating in two long, detailed issue-length articles on Watergate forThe New York Times Sunday Magazine, and a third underway but canceled when Nixon resigned. Lukas completed work on the third article and used it as the final section of the book. In the book, Lukas correctly guesses thatMark Felt wasDeep Throat.
Big Trouble, 1997, a posthumously published history of a struggle between unions and mining company officials and supporters inIdaho, early in the twentieth century, after the bombing assassination of former Idaho governorFrank Steunenberg.
Previously the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, No Edition Time from 1953–1963 and the Pulitzer Prize for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting from 1964–1984
