David K. Shipler
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David K. Shipler (born December 3, 1942) is an American author and journalist. He won the
Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction 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 du ...
in
1987 Events January * January 1 – Bolivia reintroduces the Boliviano currency. * January 2 – Chadian–Libyan conflict – Battle of Fada: The Military of Chad, Chadian army destroys a Libyan armoured brigade. * January 3 – Afghan leader ...
for '' Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land''. Among his other publications the book entitled, '' The Working Poor: Invisible in America'', also has garnered many awards. Formerly, he was a foreign correspondent of ''The New York Times'' and served as one of their bureau chiefs. He taught at many colleges and universities. Since 2010, he has published the electronic journal, ''The Shipler Report''. He began co-hosting the podcast, ''Two Reporters'' in 2021. A collection of his poems was published in 2023.


Biography

Shipler was born and grew up in Chatham, New Jersey. His mother, Eleanor Karr Shipler, taught English and upon her death, her family established the ''Eleanor Shipler English Award'' that is granted to persistent students. His grandfather, Edmund J. Karr, was a Manhattan businessman. Shipler was graduated from
Dartmouth College Dartmouth College ( ) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the America ...
in 1964, and he served on the board of trustees for the college from 1993 to 2003. He served in the U.S. Navy as an officer on a destroyer, 1964–66. He was married to Deborah I. Shipler until her death in 2024. They had three children. His father-in-law Harold Isaacs, also a reporter and author, was a professor of political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


Professional work

Shipler joined ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' as a news clerk in 1966. He was promoted to city staff reporter in 1968. He covered housing, poverty, and politics and he won awards from the
American Political Science Association The American Political Science Association (APSA) is a professional association of political scientists in the United States. Founded in 1903 in the Tilton Memorial Library (now Tilton Hall) of Tulane University in New Orleans, it publishes four ...
, the New York Newspaper Guild, and other organizations. During 1973–75 he served as a ''New York Times'' correspondent in Saigon, covering South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. He also reported from Burma. In 1975, Shipler spent a semester at the Russian Institute of Columbia University studying the Russian language, Soviet politics, economics, and history in order to prepare for assignment in Moscow. He served as correspondent in ''The New York Times'' Moscow Bureau for four years, 1975–79, and as Moscow bureau chief from 1977 to 1979. He wrote the best-seller ''Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams'', which was published in 1983 and updated in 1989. The book won the Overseas Press Club Award in 1983 as the best book that year on foreign affairs. From 1979 to 1984, Shipler served as bureau chief of ''The New York Times'' in Jerusalem. He was co-recipient (with
Thomas Friedman Thomas Loren Friedman ( ; born July 20, 1953) is an American political commentator and author. He is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who is a weekly columnist for ''The New York Times''. He has written extensively on foreign affairs, global ...
) of the 1983
George Polk Award The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York in the United States. A writer for Idea Lab, a group blog hosted on the website of PBS, described the awar ...
for covering the
1982 Lebanon War The 1982 Lebanon War, also called the Second Israeli invasion of Lebanon, began on 6 June 1982, when Israel invaded southern Lebanon. The invasion followed a series of attacks and counter-attacks between the Palestine Liberation Organization ...
. At the end of his period in Israel he was reprimanded by the director of the Israeli government's press office for breaking military censorship rules by publishing a report about a bus hijacking after which two captured hijackers were killed. He spent a year, 1984–85, as a visiting scholar at the
Brookings Institution The Brookings Institution, often stylized as Brookings, is an American think tank that conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in economics (and tax policy), metropolitan policy, governance, foreign policy, global econo ...
in Washington, D.C. to write ''Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land'', which explores the mutual perceptions and relationships between Arabs and Jews in Israel and the West Bank. The book won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and was extensively revised and updated in 2002. He was executive producer, writer, and narrator of a two-hour PBS documentary on Arab and Jew, which won a 1990 Dupont-Columbia award for broadcast journalism, and of a one-hour film, "Arab and Jew: Return to the Promised Land", which aired on PBS during August 2002. Shipler served as Chief Diplomatic Correspondent in the Washington Bureau of ''The New York Times'' until 1988. From 1988 to 1990, he was a senior associate at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) is a nonpartisan international affairs think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., with operations in Europe, South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East, as well as the United States. Foun ...
, writing on transitions to democracy in Russia and Eastern Europe for ''The New Yorker'' and other publications.


Other published works

His book, ''A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America'', based on five years of research into stereotyping and interactions across racial lines, was published in 1997. Shipler was one of three authors invited by President Clinton to participate in his first town meeting on race. His book, '' The Working Poor: Invisible in America'', was a national best-seller in 2004 and 2005. It was a finalist for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award and the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award. It won an Outstanding Book Award from The Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights at Simmons College and led to awards from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, the New York Labor Communications Council, and the Washington, D.C. Employment Justice Center. Later works include three books on civil liberties: ''The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties'', published in 2011, ''Rights at Risk: The Limits of Liberty in Today's America'', in 2012, and ''Freedom of Speech: Mightier Than the Sword'', in 2015. ''The Shipler Report'', "A Journal of Fact and Opinion" is an electronic journal that has been published by Shipler since 2010. The journal is available by subscription through e-mail. An archive is maintained of the content of the blog, which has an extensive searchable index by subjects. As a contributing writer, essays by Shipler appear in the ''
Washington Monthly ''Washington Monthly'' is a bimonthly, nonprofit magazine primarily covering United States politics and government that is based in Washington, D.C. The magazine also publishes an annual ranking of American colleges and universities, which ser ...
''. Since April 2021, Daniel Zwerdling and he are featured on their podcast, '' Two Reporters - Shipler and Zwerdling'' where they "interview stellar guests... examine problems and possible solutions... ndjust fascinating stuff" in novel ways. On November 15, 2023, Stone Lantern Books published ''The Wind is Invisible: And Other Poems'' by Shipler. It is dedicated to his wife and features poems inspired by her and her family tradition of presenting poems on special occasions in their lives, as well as, having one of her photographs for its cover. The collection celebrates life and Nature. In April 2025, he published a novel set at the end of the Vietnam War, ''The Interpreter'',https://greencitybooks.com/onesheet/the-interpreter/ through Green City Books.


Other awards and honors

Beside the awards and prizes noted above, Shipler has received a Martin Luther King Jr. Social Justice Award from Dartmouth and the following honorary degrees: Doctor of Letters from Middlebury College and from Glassboro State College (New Jersey), Doctor of Laws from Birmingham-Southern College, and Master of Arts from Dartmouth College, where he served on the board of trustees from 1993 to 2003. A member of the Pulitzer jury for general nonfiction in 2008, Shipler was its chair in 2009. Shipler has taught at Princeton University, American University, as writer-in-residence at University of Southern California, as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow on approximately fifteen campuses, and as a Montgomery Fellow and Visiting Professor of Government at Dartmouth.


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Shipler, David K. 1942 births Living people American investigative journalists American male journalists American newspaper reporters and correspondents Dartmouth College alumni People from Chatham Borough, New Jersey Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction winners Writers on the Middle East 20th-century American journalists 20th-century American writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers