J. Anthony Lukas

Jay Anthony Lukas, aka J. Anthony Lucas (April 25, 1933–June 5, 1997), was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and author, probably best known for his 1985 book "", a classic study of race relations and school busing in Boston, Massachusetts, as seen through the eyes of three families: one upper-middle-class white, one working-class white, and one African-American. [cite book | first=J. Anthony | last=Lukas | year=1985 | title=Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families | publisher=Vintage Books | location=New York | id=ISBN 0-394-74616-3 ]

His birth, early years, and education

J. Anthony Lukas was born to Elizabeth and Edwin Lukas in White Plains, New York. His mother was an actress, and his uncle Paul Lukas was an Academy Award–winning actor. Lukas at first wanted to be an actor. After his actress mother's death by suicide and his father's illness after her death, he was at the age of eight enrolled in the coeducational Putney School boarding school in Vermont. After he graduated he attended Harvard University where he worked at the "Harvard Crimson". In 1955 Lukas graduated "magna cum laude" from Harvard University. He continued his education at the Free University of Berlin as an Adenauer Fellow. Lukas then served in the US Army. [* [http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:D1xHeGCOFFUJ:www.nationalbook.org/authorsguide_jalukas.html+THe+%22Free+University+of+Berlin%22+,+%22Jay+OR+J.+Anthony+Lukas%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a Osen,Diane,"Interview of J. Anthony Lukas"] ]

His career

Lukas began his professional journalism career at the "Baltimore Sun", then moved to "The New York Times". He stayed at the "Times" for nine years, working as a roving reporter, and serving at the Washington, New York, and United Nations bureaus, and overseas in Ceylon, India, Japan, Pakistan, South Africa, and Zaire, before the Congo. After working at the "New York Times Magazine" for a short time in the 1970s, Lukas quit reporting to pursue a career in book and magazine writing, becoming known for writing intensely researched nonfiction works. He was a contributor to the "Atlantic Monthly", the "Columbia Journalism Review", "Esquire", "Harper's Magazine", "The Nation", "The New Republic", and the "Saturday Review", a co-founder and editor of "MORE", a "critical journal" on the news media, which "collapsed" in 1978, and a "contributing editor to the "New Times", an alternative magazine that folded also in 1978." ["Literary Journal: A Biographical Dictionary of Writers and Editors". Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1996, by Edd Applegate.]

elected publications

His major works include:
*"The Two Worlds of Linda Fitzgerald" , 1967, a Pulitzer-winning "New York Times" article on the life and death of a teenager in the hippie and drug counterculture
*"The Barnyard Epithet and Other Obscenities: Notes on the Chicago Conspiracy Trial", 1970, a story on the Chicago Seven, aka the Chicago Eight
*"Don't Shoot, We Are Your Children!", 1971, included the Pulitzer-winning story, "The Two Worlds of Linda Fitzgerald" and other stories of members of the Sixties' generation. A section written by Kai Erikson, a sociologist and an American Studies professor at Yale University and the editor of "The Yale Review" challenged the view that there was a generation gap between the 60s' generation and the generations before it, and that argued instead that the 60s' generation expressed overtly what previous generations had expressed covertly.
*"Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years", 1976, a book on Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal
*"", 1985, a book on busing and school desegregation in Boston and three families and their histories.
*"Big Trouble", 1997, a posthumously published history of a struggle between unions and mining company officials and supporters in Idaho during the early twentieth century.

His death

In 1997, while his last book, "Big Trouble", was undergoing final revisions, Lukas committed suicide by hanging himself with a bathrobe sash. He had been diagnosed with depression about ten years earlier. [cite news
first=Doreen
last=Carvajal
url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CE2DB133CF931A25753C1A961958260&sec=health&pagewanted=1
title=Survived By His Book
work=New York Times
date=1997-10-12
accessdate=2006-04-24 ] In an interview that followed the publication of "Common Ground" he gave some hints about his impending suicide, linking it with his career as a writer. "All writers ...," he said, "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 developed tuberculosis—psychosomatically triggered, the doctors thought—forcing him to seek treatment in an Arizona sanatorium. 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". [ [http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:D1xHeGCOFFUJ:www.nationalbook.org/authorsguide_jalukas.html+THe+%22Free+University+of+Berlin%22+,+%22Jay+OR+J.+Anthony+Lukas%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a Osen, Diane, "Interview of J. Anthony Lukas"] ]

Prizes

Lukas won his first Pulitzer Prize, the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, in 1967 for his "New York Times" article "The Two Worlds of Linda Fitzpatrick." This article documented the life and violent death of a teenager from a wealthy Greenwich, Connecticut family who became involved in drugs and the hippie movement. Also in 1967 Lukas was awarded a George Polk Award in Local Reporting [ [http://www.brooklyn.liu.edu/polk/prev/prev60.html The George Polk Awards for Journalists] .]

A second Pulitzer, the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction,was awarded to Lukas for "Common Ground". [cite web
title=The Pulitzer Prize Winners
work=The Pulitzer Prizes
url=http://www.pulitzer.org/
accessdate=2006-04-24] , for which he also received the 1985 National Book Award [ [http://www.bookweb.org/btw/awards/National-Bk-Award.html ABA (American Booksellers Association)] ] , the National Book Critics Award, [ [http://www.bookweb.org/btw/awards/Critics-Circle.html ABA (American Booksellers Association)] ] , the 1985-1986 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award [ [http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:Url8gR8C2TAJ:www.rfkmemorial.org/legacyinaction/19th/+%5BRobert+F.+Kennedy+Book+Award,Lukas&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us&client=firefox-a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial website] ] and the Political Book of the Year Award.

Lukas is now the namesake of the Lukas Prize Project, co-administered by the Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, to support the works of American nonfiction writers. The project gives conferences and presents three annual awards: the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, and the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. [cite web
title=The Lukas Prize Project
work=Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
url=http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/events/lukas/
accessdate=2006-04-24]

References

External links

* [http://books.google.com/books?id=dWQpXRudQPwC&dq=%22literary+journalism%22&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=2Dsa0AMGKf&sig=nvN_OduIZNHdyXBkhWCtUgx6P4Q Applegate, Edd, 1996 , Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut]
* [http://www.salon.com/june97/media/media2970612.html Freedman,Samuel G, 1997. "A Heart,A Brain, and A Good Pair Of Shoes] ", 1997 Salon, June 12, 1997]
* [http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:vQJqzLUuWokJ:www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/specials/lukas-common.html+J,+Anthony+Lukas,+.+Boston+Don%27t+Shoot:+We+Are+Your+Children+(New+York:+Random+House,+1968)&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&client=firefox-a Mitgang, Herbert, 1985 New York Times, September 15, 1985, Sunday, Late City Final Edition Section 7; Page 1, Column 1; Book Review Desk] ]
* [http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:D1xHeGCOFFUJ:www.nationalbook.org/authorsguide_jalukas.html+THe+%22Free+University+of+Berlin%22+,+%22Jay+OR+J.+Anthony+Lukas%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a Osen, Diane,"Interview of J. Anthony Lukas"]
* [http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:SBah-2OiJ6wJ:www.aaronsw.com/2002/press/vivafranca+%22literary+Journalism%22,+J.+Anthony+Lucas&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=usRosenbaum, Rosenbaum, Rob, 2006, "When Intellectuals Had a Real Magazine: Viva Lingua Franca!", New York News Observer, 4/24/2006]
* [http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/00-3NRfall/State-of-Narrative.html The State of Narrative Nonfiction Writing", Nieman Reports, The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, Vol. 54 No. 3 Fall 2000]