::
spotlight on the craft::
:: An exclusive interview:: save the date :: this broadcast
airs in February 2008
:: Laurence Bergreen :: Author, Biographer, Historian
:: Tune in each week to WordSmitten's
About the Books
Tune
in to WordSmitten's upcoming broadcast featuring an exclusive
interview with author and biographer, Laurence Bergreen. Bergreen's
books have been translated into fifteen languages and his recent
book, published by Alfred A. Knopf, is the exotically titled,
Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu.
Mr.
Bergreen, to be featured in an exclusive interview on WordSmitten's
About the Books, discusses his work, his life, and
an upcoming feature film based on this book and starring Matt
Damon and written by William Monahan, who won an Oscar for "The
Departed." The film, a Warner Brothers project, is in development.
His
previous work, Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying
Circumnavigation of the Globe (William Morrow/HarperCollins)
steps rapidly and in a cavalier mode, into the world of compelling
exploration. A New York Times "Notable Book"
for 2003, it is also in development as a motion picture and
is now in its tenth printing.
In
addition, Bergreen is the author of Voyage to Mars: NASA's
Search for Life Beyond Earth, a narrative of NASA's exploration
of Mars, published in November 2000 by Penguin Putnam. Dramatic
rights were acquired by TNT. In 1997, Bantam Doubleday Dell
published Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life, a comprehensive
biography drawing on unpublished manuscripts and exclusive interviews
with Armstrong colleagues and friends. It has been published
in Germany, Finland, and Great Britain. In 1994, Simon &
Schuster published his Capone: The Man and the Era.
A Book-of-the-Month Club selection, it has been published in
numerous foreign languages, was optioned by Miramax, and was
a New York Times "Notable Book."
His biography,
As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin, won
the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award and the ASCAP-Deems Taylor
award and received front-page reviews in major American and
British newspapers and appeared on bestseller lists; it was
also a New York Times "Notable Book" for
1990. His previous biography, James Agee: A Life, was
also critically acclaimed and was a New York Times
"Notable Book" for 1984.
Laurence
(Larry) Bergreen has written for many national publications
including Esquire, Newsweek, TV Guide, Details, Prologue, The
Chicago Tribune, and Military History Quarterly. He has taught
at the New School for Social Research and served as Assistant
to the President of the Museum of Television and Radio in New
York.
In
1995, he served as a judge for the National Book Awards and
in 1991 as a judge for the PEN/Albrand Nonfiction Award. A frequent
lecturer at major universities and symposiums, he also serves
as a Featured Historian for the History Channel. Mr. Bergreen
graduated from Harvard University in 1972. He is a member of
PEN American Center, The Explorers Club, the Authors Guild,
and the board of the New York Society Library, he lives in New
York City. Suzanne Gluck of the William Morris Agency is the
literary representative for Laurence Bergreen.
~*~
Photo
of Laurence Bergreen courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., a division of Random House
(credit photo: Sigrid Estrada)
