David Emanuel Hoffman (born August 5, 1953) is an American writer and journalist, a contributing editor to ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
''. He won a
Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for a book about the legacy of the
nuclear arms race
The nuclear arms race was an arms race competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War. During this same period, in addition to the American and Soviet nuc ...
.
[
]
Journalism
Hoffman was born in Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
The city was es ...
and grew up in Delaware
Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...
, where he attended the University of Delaware
The University of Delaware (colloquially UD or Delaware) is a public land-grant research university located in Newark, Delaware. UD is the largest university in Delaware. It offers three associate's programs, 148 bachelor's programs, 121 ma ...
. He came to Washington D.C. in 1977 to work for the Capitol Hill News Service. As a member of the Washington bureau of the ''San Jose Mercury News
''The Mercury News'' (formerly ''San Jose Mercury News'', often locally known as ''The Merc'') is a morning daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published by the Bay Area News Group, a subsidia ...
'', he covered Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign. In May 1982, he joined ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' to help cover the Reagan White House. He also covered the first two years of the George H. W. Bush presidency. His White House coverage won three national journalism awards.
After reporting on the State Department, he became Jerusalem bureau chief for ''The Washington Post'' in 1992. After studying Russian at Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...
, he began six years in Moscow. From 1995 to 2001, he served as Moscow bureau chief, and later as foreign editor and assistant managing editor for foreign news.
Hoffman's first book was published by PublicAffairs in 2002, '' The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia''. He won the annual Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are awarded annually for the "Letters, Drama, and Music" category. The award is given to a nonfiction book written by an American author and published duri ...
in 2010 for his second book, '' The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy'' (Doubleday, 2009). The Prize citation termed it "a well documented narrative that examines the terrifying doomsday competition between two superpowers and how weapons of mass destruction still imperil humankind."["The 2010 Pulitzer Prize Winners: General Nonfiction"]
The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved November 20, 2013. With short biography and publisher's description.
In 2015, Hoffman published '' The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal'' about the life of Adolf Tolkachev, who was arrested and executed for giving classified information to the CIA.
Bibliography
* '' The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia'' (PublicAffairs, 2002),
* '' The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy'' (Doubleday, 2009),
* '' The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal'', New York, Doubleday, 2015, (about Adolf Tolkachev)
References
External links
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoffman, David E.
American newspaper reporters and correspondents
Living people
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction winners
The Washington Post journalists
Writers from Palo Alto, California
American male journalists
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American journalists
21st-century American non-fiction writers
The Mercury News people
1953 births