Mark Hertsgaard | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Hertsgaard at the 2011Brooklyn Book Festival | |
| Born | 1956 (age 68–69) |
| Alma mater | Johns Hopkins University |
| Occupation | Journalist |
Mark Hertsgaard (born 1956) is an American journalist, the co-founder and executive director of Covering Climate Now. He is the environment correspondent forThe Nation, and the author of seven non-fiction books, includingEarth Odyssey (1998)and Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth (2011).[1]
He has covered climate change, politics, economics, the press, and music since 1989. His best-known work as an author isOn Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency (1988), which described the way theReagan White House "deployed raw power and conventional wisdom to intimidate Washington's television newsrooms."[2] Hertsgaard has also written for magazines and newspapers such asThe Guardian,Vanity Fair,Scientific American,Time,Harper's, andLe Monde.[3] He has been a commentator for the public radio programsMorning Edition,Marketplace, andLiving on Earth, and taught writing atJohns Hopkins University and theUniversity of California, Berkeley. Hertsgaard lives inSan Francisco, California.
Hertsgaard received a B.A. degree in international studies fromJohns Hopkins University in 1977 and was one of the founders of theBaltimore City Paper. According to his fellow Johns Hopkins alumnusRuss Smith, he worked in theInstitute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., after graduation.[4]
While compiling a feature article forThe New Yorker in 1993, Hertsgaard broke the news that the three surviving members ofthe Beatles were going to issue previously unreleased music from the group's career, as part of their multimediaAnthology project. In addition, they were reuniting to work on new recordings.[5] At this time, he was granted rare access to the band'sEMI recording archives in London, gaining insight that informed his 1995 bookA Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles.[5] Writing in 2000,Nick Bromell, professor of English at theUniversity of Massachusetts, Amherst and the founding editor ofBoston Review, describedA Day in the Life as "the best single book on the music of the Beatles".[6]
During the 1990s, Hertsgaard's attention turned to the ecology of theEarth. He embarked upon a seven-year global tour to investigate the issue ofenvironmental degradation. The journey spanned four continents, 19 countries and hundreds of interviews.[2] This resulted in the bookEarth Odyssey: Around the World in Search of Our Environmental Future (1999), which was reviewed favorably inThe New York Times Book Review andTime magazine.[7]
Hertsgaard also wrote aboutclimate change adaptation inHot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth (2011), published byHoughton Mifflin Harcourt.[1] From 2011 to 2013, he was Schmidt Family Foundation Fellow atNew America Foundation, researching the linked challenges of climate change, food security, poverty, and ecological agriculture.
In May 2013, during a neighborhood Mother's Daysecond line parade inNew Orleans, 19 people were shot and wounded. The attack took place at the corner of Frenchmen Street and North Villere in the city's7th Ward, where hundreds of people had gathered near the French Quarter. Victims included 10 men, seven women, a boy and a girl. Three people were seriously wounded. TheAssociated Press reported that three suspects were seen fleeing the scene. Police authorities classified it as part of the gun violence in the city.[8] Hertsgaard has written about being one of the victims.[9](subscription required)
