Peter Carlson Biography

Peter Carlson has been a journalist for most of his life.

He wrote for his middle school newspaper and his high school newspaper, and then studied journalism at Boston University, where he worked on The News, a radical weekly that got kicked off campus for being too outrageous.

After a post-graduate period of wandering around the western hemisphere, searching for adventure—and sometimes finding it—he worked at the Boston Herald American, People magazine and The Washington Post. He loved the reporter's life—leaving the office and going someplace to meet interesting people and watch them in action, then coming back and turning the experience into a story. He worked at the Post for 22 glorious years, writing feature stories. For 11 years, he also wrote a fortnightly column about magazines.

In 2008, Carlson took an early retirement buyout, pretending his pension was a pseudo-Guggenheim grant to do interesting and creative work. Since then, he has produced two books of history--K Blows Top and Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy—and a regular column in American History magazine. He plans to do more in the future.

Carlson lives in Rockville, Maryland with his wife, Kathy Oehl, an ICU nurse. They have two beautiful daughters, Caitlin and Emily, and a handsome dog named Albert.

Peter Carlson's website

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