About the Author
Kai Bird's most recent book, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978, was released by Scribner on April 20, 2010. This book is a meld of personal memoir and history, fusing his early life in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Egypt with an intimate account of the American experience in the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli tragedy. It was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award in the category of Autobiography.
It was also a Finalist for the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
He is the co-author with Martin J. Sherwin of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005), which also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and the Duff Cooper Prize for History in London. He wrote The Chairman: John J. McCloy, the Making of the American Establishment (1992) and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy & William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (1998). He is also co-editor with Lawrence Lifschultz of Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (1998). He is the recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation's Study Center, Bellagio, Italy and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. He is a member of the Society of American Historians and a contributing editor of The Nation. He lives in Lima, Peru with his wife.
His current project is The Good Spy, a biography of Robert C. Ames, the legendary CIA officer who was killed in the April 18, 1983 truck bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. This book will be published by the Crown Publishing Group.
Kai Bird is represented by the Gail Ross Literary Agency in Washington DC, and the BrightSight Group, a speaker's bureau in Princeton: www.BrightSightgroup.com
Recent News
- Preface to Crossing Mandelbaum Gate
- Advance Praise for Crossing Mandelbaum Gate
- Kai\'s interview with Robert Siegel of NPR\'s All Things Considered April 21, 2010
