Geoffrey Champion Ward (born 1940) is an American editor, author, historian and writer of scripts for American history documentaries for public television. He is the author or co-author of 19 books, including 10 companion books to the documentaries he has written. He is the winner of seven
Emmy Awards.
Biography
Youth
Ward was born in
Newark, Ohio
Newark ( ) is a city serving as the county seat of Licking County, Ohio, United States, east of Columbus, at the junction of the forks of the Licking River. The population was 49,934 at the 2020 census, which makes it the 15th largest city in O ...
, and is a graduate of
Oberlin College (1962), where he majored in art.
He had initially planned to be a painter.
His father was F. Champion Ward, educator and a Vice-President of the
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...
. Ward spent some of his boyhood years in India.
Ward's great-grandfather was
Ferdinand Ward, a 19th-century swindler whose
ponzi scheme lead to a financial crash which bankrupted many investors, including
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Ar ...
and
Thomas Nast
Thomas Nast (; ; September 26, 1840December 7, 1902) was a German-born American caricaturist and editorial cartoonist often considered to be the "Father of the American Cartoon".
He was a critic of Democratic Representative "Boss" Tweed and ...
. Ward wrote a book about the story of his great-grandfather, ''A Disposition to be Rich,'' in 2012.
Career
Early career
Ward was the founding editor of ''Audience Magazine'' (1970-1973) and the editor of ''
American Heritage Magazine
''American Heritage'' is a magazine dedicated to covering the history of the United States for a mainstream readership. Until 2007, the magazine was published by Forbes. '' (1977-1982). His 1989 biography of
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
, ''A First-class Temperament: the Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt'', won the
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".[Francis Parkman Prize
The Francis Parkman Prize, named after Francis Parkman, is awarded by the Society of American Historians for the best book in American history each year. Its purpose is to promote literary distinction in historical writing. The Society of American ...]
of the Society of American Historians and was a finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize.
Later career
Ward has been a long-time collaborator of American documentary filmmaker
Ken Burns. Ward describes being asked to write the script for ''
Huey Long
Huey Pierce Long Jr. (August 30, 1893September 10, 1935), nicknamed "the Kingfish", was an American politician who served as the 40th governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and as a United States senator from 1932 until his assassination ...
'' after meeting Burns at his house in Walpole, New Hampshire.
The principal writer of the television mini-series ''
The Civil War'' (1990), Ward has collaborated with its co-producer
Ken Burns on most of the documentaries he has made since, including ''
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
'', ''
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...
'', ''
The War'', and ''
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and ...
''. The films with Burns have garnered him five
Emmy Awards. He has won an additional two Emmys for ''The Kennedys'' (1992), and ''TR, The Story of Theodore Roosevelt'' (1996).
His script for the documentary ''
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson'', won the
Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America is the joint efforts of two different US labor unions representing TV and film writers:
* The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), headquartered in New York City and affiliated with the AFL–CIO
* The Writers Gu ...
Award in 2005, and the accompanying book won the 2006
William Hill Sports Book of the Year
The William Hill Sports Book of the Year is an annual British sports literary award sponsored by bookmaker William Hill. The award is dedicated to rewarding excellence in sports writing. It was first awarded in 1989, and was devised by Graham ...
and the
Anisfield-Wolf Award The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award is an American literary award dedicated to honoring written works that make important contributions to the understanding of racism and the appreciation of the rich diversity of human culture. Established in 1935 by Clev ...
for best biography.
In 2006, the
Organization of American Historians gave Ward their
Friend of History Award for his outstanding contributions to American history:
Over the last twenty years Geoffrey Ward's writings on American History have had a greater influence and reached a wider audience than those of any other American writer and historian. iswork is always his own, but he has also helped free ideas that otherwise might have been imprisoned in the academy and helped them find a wider world. He has helped academic historians understand the possibilities, limits, and demands of what has become the medium through which most Americans now get their history."
The 2011 Burns/Ward collaboration, ''
Prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcohol ...
'', brought Ward his seventh Emmy for Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming. Since that project, he worked with Ken Burns on ''
The Roosevelts: An Intimate History'', a seven-part documentary miniseries depicting the lives of
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
,
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
, and
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt () (October 11, 1884November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four ...
, (broadcast on PBS in September 2014), and a multi-part TV series "
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and ...
", with
Lynn Novick
Lynn Novick is an American director and producer of documentary films, widely known for her work with Ken Burns.
Early life
Novick was born in 1962, raised in New York City, and graduated from Horace Mann School in 1979. She graduated magna cum la ...
and Ken Burns (broadcast on PBS in September 2017).
In 2012, Ward published a biography of his great grandfather
Ferdinand Ward (1851–1925), known as the greatest swindler of the Gilded Age. ''A Disposition to be Rich'' was written with the assistance of private family materials.
India
Ward spent some of his boyhood years in India and has remained involved with India and in Indian issues. Working and writing about the ongoing struggle to save the Bengal tiger in the wild has meant friendships with great tiger men like
Fateh Singh Rathore and
Billy Arjan Singh
Kunwar "Billy" Arjan Singh (15 August 1917 – 1 January 2010) was an Indian hunter turned conservationist and author. He was the first who tried to reintroduce tigers and leopards from captivity into the wild.Thapar, V. (2010) ''Obituary: ...
. His essays and pieces on India have appeared in a wide array of publications, including ''
Geo
Geo- is a prefix derived from the Greek word ''γη'' or ''γαια'', meaning "earth", usually in the sense of "ground or land”.
GEO or Geo may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* ''GEO'' (magazine), a popular scientific magazine ...
'', ''
Audubon
The National Audubon Society (Audubon; ) is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation of birds and their habitats. Located in the United States and incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such org ...
'', ''
National Geographic'', ''
Smithsonian'', ''
Aperture
In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane.
An ...
'' and others. In 2011, he wrote an introduction for the book ''Varanasi: Portrait of a Civilization,'' (Collins, India,) by the photographer ''Raghu Rai,'' with whom he has collaborated on magazine pieces. He is currently at work on a book about the partition of the Indian subcontinent.
Jazz
Ward is involved in the world of jazz and has collaborated with
Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American trumpeter, composer, teacher, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has promoted classical and jazz music, often to young audiences. Marsalis has won nine Grammy Award ...
and the ''Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.'' After the documentary ''
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
'' was aired on public television, in an interview in the New York Times, Ward spoke of playing ''West End Blues'' by
Louis Armstrong, as a 15-year-old student, so often that the bartender in the Paris cafe across the street from his student housing called him 'Satchmo': "I must have played it a thousand times," he remembered. "I think jazz music is so important to this country.... I find these characters, Armstrong, Ellington, working in a Jim Crow world, genuinely heroic.""
Personal life
Ward is married to the writer and social/environmental activist Diane Raines Ward. He has three children.
When he was nine years old, Ward contracted
poliomyelitis, and wears leg braces. He describes hearing
Louis Armstrong's recording of "
West End Blues
"West End Blues" is a multi-strain twelve-bar blues composition by Joe "King" Oliver. It is most commonly performed as an instrumental, although it has lyrics added by Clarence Williams.
King Oliver and his Dixie Syncopators made the first rec ...
" on the radio while in the hospital and noted its profound impact on his life.
He later cited Franklin Roosevelt as a source of inspiration on how to overcome his handicap. When interviewed for ''The Roosevelts'', Ward "was determined not to get emotional", as Ken Burns said later, when discussing the "terror" felt by FDR during his ordeal in 1921; Burns did not mention Ward's disability on camera, but he had waited until the end of their interview before getting to questions on FDR's polio, at which point Ward "was taken aback and the emotions caught him".
Ward considers British broadcaster and naturalist
David Attenborough to be "the best television writer in the history of the medium."
Ward describes himself as a "lifelong liberal Democrat."
Works
Books
*''Lincoln’s Thought and the Present'' (1976),
Sangamon State University
*''Treasures of the World: The Maharajas'' (1983),
Time Life
Time Life, with sister subsidiaries StarVista Live and Lifestyle Products Group, a holding of Direct Holdings Global LLC, is an American production company and direct marketer conglomerate, that is known for selling books, music, video/DVD, ...
,
New York
*''Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882-1905'' (1985),
Harper & Row
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins based in New York City.
History
J. & J. Harper (1817–1833)
James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishin ...
; New York
*''A First Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt'' (1989), Harper & Row.
*''The Civil War: An Illustrated History,'' (1990), with
Ric and Ken Burns; based upon PBS television series,
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in ...
*''American Originals: The Private Worlds of Some Singular Men and Women'' (1991),
HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News ...
*''Tiger-Wallahs: Encounters with the Men Who Tried to Save the Greatest of the Cats'' (1993), with Diane Raines Ward; HarperCollins
*''Baseball: An Illustrated History'' (1994), with Ken Burns; Alfred A. Knopf
*''Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley'' (1995),
Houghton Mifflin
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...
*''The West: An Illustrated History'' (1997),
Little, Brown & Co
Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and James Brown in Boston. For close to two centuries it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Early lists featured Emily ...
*''The Year of the Tiger'' (1998), with Michael Nichols;
National Geographic Books
*''Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony'' (1999), with Ken Burns; Alfred A. Knopf
*''Jazz: A History of America’s Music'' (2000), with Ken Burns; Alfred A. Knopf
*''Mark Twain'' (2001), with Dayton Duncan; Alfred A. Knopf
*''Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson'' (2004); Alfred A. Knopf
[Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, 2005; William Hill Sports Book of the Year, 2006]
*''The War: An Intimate History'' (2007), with Ken Burns; Alfred A. Knopf
*''Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life'' (2008), with Wynton Marsalis;
Random House
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
*''A Disposition to be Rich: How a Small-Town Pastor’s Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash and Made Himself the Best-Hated Man in the United States'' (2012); Alfred A. Knopf
*''The Roosevelts: An Intimate History'' (2014) with Ken Burns; Alfred A. Knopf
*''The Vietnam War: An Intimate History'' (2017) Alfred A. Knopf
Documentary film scripts
;With Ken Burns and Florentine Films; shown on Public Television:
* ''
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and ...
'' (2017)
* ''
The Roosevelts: An Intimate History'' (2014)
* ''
Prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcohol ...
'' (2011, Emmy Award)
* ''
The War'' (2007; Emmy Award, 2007)
* ''
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson'' (2005 Emmy Award, 2005)
* ''
Mark Twain'' (with Dayton Duncan, 2002)
* ''
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
'' (2001)
* ''
Not for Ourselves Alone'' (1999)
* ''Frank Lloyd Wright'' (1998)
* ''
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the natio ...
'' (1997)
* ''
The West
West is a cardinal direction or compass point.
West or The West may also refer to:
Geography and locations
Global context
* The Western world
* Western culture and Western civilization in general
* The Western Bloc, countries allied with NATO ...
'' (with Dayton Duncan, 1996)
* ''
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...
'' (principal writer 1994; Emmy Award, 1995)
* ''
Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio'' (writer, 1991)
* ''
The Civil War'' (principal writer, 1990; Emmy Award, 1991)
* ''
Thomas Hart Benton'' (writer,1989)
* ''
The Congress'' (contributing writer,1989)
* ''
The Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty (''Liberty Enlightening the World''; French: ''La Liberté éclairant le monde'') is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in New York City, in the United States. The copper statue, a ...
'' (co-writer, 1985)
* ''
Huey Long
Huey Pierce Long Jr. (August 30, 1893September 10, 1935), nicknamed "the Kingfish", was an American politician who served as the 40th governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and as a United States senator from 1932 until his assassination ...
'' (writer, 1985)
;For the
American Experience
''American Experience'' is a television program airing on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. The program airs documentaries, many of which have won awards, about important or interesting events and people in American his ...
Series,
WGBH-TV
WGBH-TV (channel 2), branded on-air as GBH or GBH 2 since 2020, is the primary PBS member television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is the flagship property of the WGBH Educational Foundation, which also owns Boston's se ...
* ''Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided'' (with David Grubin, 2001)
* ''TR'' (writer with David Grubin, 1996. Emmy Award)
* ''The Last Boss'' (writer, with Barak Goodman, 1996)
* ''The Kennedys'' (principal writer, 1992; Emmy Award)
* ''Reminiscing in Tempo'', (principal writer, 1991)
* ''Lindbergh'' (writer, 1990)
* ''Nixon'' (principal writer, 1990; Writers Guild Award)
References
External links
PBS bio
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ward, Geoffrey C.
1940 births
Living people
Oberlin College alumni
University of Chicago Laboratory Schools alumni
20th-century American historians
American male non-fiction writers
21st-century American historians
21st-century American male writers
People with polio
Documentary war filmmakers
20th-century American male writers