User:ThomasMaierBooks/Thomas Maier

Thomas Maier, born May 23, 1956 in New York City, is an award-winning American investigative journalist and [http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Maier/e/B000APCJ22/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1 the author of four biographies. Since 1984, he has been a writer for Newsday in New York, previously working at the Chicago Sun-Times.

Maier's most recent biography about William Masters and Virginia Johnson ("Masters of Sex", Basic Books, 2009; paperback 2010) was called "eye-opening" and "a bombshell" by the Sunday New York Times Book Review, "well written with good humor" by the NY Times daily reviewer Dwight Garner, and "an intelligent and well-conceived biography" by the Washington Post, along with a starred review by Booklist. The Chicago Tribune listed it among the paper's favorite non-fiction books of 2009. [Oprah's "O" magazine even cited it among its top 10 "smart, engaging, occasionally uproarious" books dealing with sex]. His investigative findings -- revealing that Masters and Johnson fabricated "gay conversion" case studies in their landmark homosexuality book -- prompted headlines in The New York Times, Scientific American and speaking engagements at Harvard Medical School and the National Academy of Sciences in California. This first-time biography of Masters and Johnson also received "blurb" endorsements from Gay Talese, Nelson DeMille and biographer Debby Applegate, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Sony Pictures Television recently bought the rights to this book.

Maier's "The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings" (Basic Books, 2003) is a 700-page history examing the impact of the family's Irish Catholic immigrant background on their public and private lives. It was featured on ABC's "20/20" program, the CBS Evening News, NBC's "Today" show and in publications around the world. "The Kennedys" was praised as one of the top 10 all-time JFK books by the American Booksellers Association's "Book Sense" program. It was featured prominently as annual holiday choice by USA Today's literary critics. It was also a selection of the Book of the Month Club, the History Book Club, excerpted in Redbook and received "blurb" endorsements from historians James MacGregor Burns, Ronald Steel and Newsweek's Evan Thomas. The unabridged audiotape version of "The Kennedys" also won the Earphone Award from Audiofile magazine. Warners Bros. Home Video produced a DVD documentary from this book with the same name that was sold in 2008 along with Oliver Stone's classic movie feature "JFK".

"Dr. Spock An American Life" (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1998), was selected as one of the top ten non-fiction books of 1998 by The Boston Globe and as a "Notable Book of the Year" by The New York Times. Excerpts appeared in Newsweek, U.S News and World Report and it was condensed as a Readers' Digest book. For this book, Maier also appeared on NBC's "Today" show, C-Span's "BookTV," and served as consultant and on-air commentator for a documentary about Dr. Spock's life, jointly produced by the BBC and A&E's "Biography." A paperback version was published in spring 2003 by Basic Books to mark Dr. Spock's 100th birthday.

"Newhouse: All the Glitter, Power and Glory of America's Richest Media Empire and the Secretive Man Behind It," (St. Martin's Press, 1994) won the Frank Luther Mott Award by the National Honor Society in Journalism and Mass Communication as best media book of the year. Excerpts appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Worth, and The London Telegraph magazine. An updated trade paperback of "Newhouse," published by Johnson Books, was picked by Entertainment Weekly as one of the top ten "must reads" for the 1997 summer season.

In 2002, Maier won the world's top $20,000 investigative prize from the International Consortium of Investigative Reporting, now called the "Daniel Pearl Award", for a Newsday series about the deadly exploitation of immigrant workers, besting other finalists from The New Yorker, the BBC, and Sunday Times of London. Others investigative series by Maier at Newsday have won the national Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award, the national Worth Bingham Award, National Headliners Award, New York Deadline Club, Society of Silurians and many others. Based on a Newsday investigation, Maier worked as paid consultant to CBS News' "48 Hours" show for a segment on international child abduction. In 2010, Maier's print series and accompanying video documentary about Brookhaven National Lab's treatment of nuclear bomb victims in the Pacific won Newsday's first New York Emmy Award nomination as well as the National Headliners Award.

Maier earned a master's degree in 1982 from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he won the John M. Patterson Prize for television documentary-making at graduation. and was later awarded a McCloy fellowship to Europe administered by Columbia. He has an undergraduate degree in political science from Fordham University in the Bronx. He lives on Long Island with his wife and family.

References: 1. Maier, Thomas. "Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love", Basic Books, 2009. 2. Maier, Thomas. "The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings", Basic Books, 2003. 3. Maier, Thomas. "Dr. Spock: An American Life," Harcourt Brace and Co, 1998, Basic Books, 2002. 4. Maier, Thomas. "Newhouse: All the Glitter, Power, & Glory of America's Richest Media Empire & the Secretive Man Behind It," St. Martin's Press, 1994, Johnson Book, 1997.