Peter Sherwin Prescott (July 15, 1935 - April 23, 2004) was an American author and book critic. He was the senior book reviewer at ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...

'' for more than two decades. In January 1970, Prescott published ''A World of Our Own: Notes on Life and Learning in a Boys' Preparatory School,'' which described his alma mater, The Choate School, now Choate Rosemary Hall. He graduated '' magna cum laude'' from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

and completed graduate work at the

Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...

. In the April 10, 1978 issue of ''

'', he accused John Gardner of plagiarism, citing a previously published article by Sumner J. Ferris. In 1981 he published ''The Child Savers,'' which won the

Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights (formerly the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, or RFK Center) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit human rights advocacy organization. It was named after United States Senator Robert F. Kenned ...

1982 Book award given annually to a novelist who "most faithfully and forcefully reflects Robert Kennedy's purposes - his concern for the poor and the powerless, his struggle for honest and even-handed justice, his conviction that a decent society must assure all young people a fair chance, and his faith that a free democracy can act to remedy disparities of power and opportunity." Prescott served on the 1981, 1983, 1987 and 1989 juries for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction at the behest of administrator Robert Christopher, a former ''Newsweek'' colleague. Prescott is referred to in Stephen King's 1987 novel '' Misery'' as someone who would probably blast the protagonist, Paul Sheldon's, next novel "in his finest genteel disparaging manner."King, Stephen, ''Misery'' (Scribner 1987), p. 48 In the mid-1990s, Prescott was collecting interviews for a book about Alfred and Blanche Knopf. He died in 2004.

References

External links

Finding aid to Peter Prescott papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
American literary critics 2004 deaths 1935 births Harvard College alumni {{US-nonfiction-writer-stub