John M. Barry Biography
John M. Barry is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author whose books have won more than twenty awards. In 2005 the National Academies of Science named The Great Influenza, a study of the 1918 pandemic, the year’s outstanding book on science or medicine. In 1998 Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, won the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians for the year’s best book of American history.
Both The Great Influenza and Rising Tide have proven influential in recent years. Barry was invited by the Bush and Obama administrations to advise on pandemic preparedness and response, and he has advised other federal, state, United Nations, and World Health Organization officials on influenza, water-related disasters, crisis management, and risk communication. A member of advisory boards at M.I.T’s Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Barry was also the only non-scientist on a federal government Infectious Disease Board of Experts.
His articles have appeared in such scientific journals as Nature and Journal of Infectious Disease as well as in lay publications ranging from Sports Illustrated to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fortune, Time, Newsweek, and Esquire. A frequent guest on every broadcast network in the US, he has appeared on such shows as NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's World News, and NPR's All Things Considered, and on such foreign media as the BBC and Al Jazeera. He has also served as a consultant for Sony Pictures and contributed to award-winning television documentaries.
In addition to serving on advisory boards at Johns Hopkins and MIT, he is on the board of the Society of American Historians, American Heritage Rivers, and the advisory board for the National Mississippi River Museum in Dubuque. Before becoming a writer, Barry coached football at the high school, small college, and major college levels. Currently Distinguished Scholar at the Center for Bioenvironmental Research of Tulane and Xavier Universities, he lives in New Orleans.
From the author's website
This biography was last updated on 09/22/2010.
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