James Barrett Reston Jr. (March 8, 1941 – July 19, 2023) was an American journalist, documentarian and author of political and historical fiction and non-fiction.[1][2] He wrote about the Vietnam War, the Jonestown Massacre, civil rights, the impeachment of Richard Nixon, and the September 11 attacks.
Reston was born in Manhattan, New York City.[3][2] His father James "Scotty" Reston was an editor of the New York Times.[4][2] His mother, Sarah Jane "Sally" Fulton, was a journalist, photographer, writer, and publisher who joined her husband on foreign assignments in Europe and Asia during World War II.[1][5][2] His maternal grandfather, William J. Fulton, served two terms as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Illinois.[5]
Reston's family moved to Washington, D.C. when he was two years old.[2] He attended the St. Albans School in Washington, D.C.[6][3] He earned his B.A. in philosophy in 1963 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) while on a Morehead Scholarship.[1][6][2] At UNC, he was an All-South soccer player and still retains the single-game scoring record for the university—five goals against North Carolina State University on October 18, 1962.[7][2] He attended Oxford University during his junior year.[8]
Reston was an assistant to and speechwriter for U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall from 1964 to 1965.[1] He was a reporter for the Chicago Daily News from 1964 to 1965.[1][2] From 1965 to 1968, he served in the U.S. Army as an intelligence officer and sergeant.[1][6][2] From 1971 to 1981, he was a lecturer in creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[9][1][2] From 1976 to 1977, he was a fiction reviewer for the Chronicle of Higher Education.[1]
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Reston wrote numerous pieces about amnesty for Vietnam deserters, people who had left the United States rather than serving in the war.[10][11] This led to two books, both collection of essays, When Can I Come Home, in 1972 and The Amnesty of John David Herndon in 1973.[9] Reston said, "Now as a veteran against the war, I gravitated to the issue of amnesty for Vietnam war resisters, no doubt because emotionally I sympathized deeply with their plight and their decision in contrast to my own course."[11]
| External videos | |
|---|---|
 Presentation by Reston on The Conviction of Richard Nixon, July 12, 2007, C-SPAN |
From 1976 to 1977, Reston was David Frost's Watergate adviser for the historic Nixon interviews.[8] Reston's book about the interviews, The Conviction of Richard Nixon, was the inspiration for Peter Morgan's 2006 play Frost/Nixon, in which the character Jim Reston is the narrator.[8] It was made into a film in 2008, also called Frost/Nixon.[2]
Reston's articles appeared in American Heritage,[12] American Theatre, George, Esquire, National Geographic, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Omni, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Saturday Review, Time, Vanity Fair, and Washington Post Magazine.[1][8]
His works of both fiction and non-fiction cover a wide range of historical and political topics.[7] In 1985, Reston was the Newsweek, PBS, and BBC candidate to be the first writer in space on the NASA space shuttle.[3] That program was scrapped after the Challenger accident in January 1986.[3] On May 23, 1994, Time magazine published his cover story on the impact of the Shoemaker Levy 9 comet into Jupiter.[3]
Reston wrote four plays which were all stage adaptations of his books[13] —Sherman the Peacemaker premiered at the Playmakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1979, and was an outgrowth of his book, Sherman's March and Vietnam;[13] Jonestown Express, based on his 1981 book Our Father Who Art in Hell, premiered with the Trinity Square Repertory Company in 1982; Galileo's Torch was adapted from his biography of Galileo and Galileo: A Life was staged in seven separate productions between 2014 and 2017;[14] and Luther's Trumpet is an adaptation of his 2016 book, Luther's Fortress, and premiered in September 2018.[13]
In 2005, Reston tried to stop production of Ridley Scott's film Kingdom of Heaven, claiming half of the script was based on the first part of his book Warriors of God.[15] Reston's book was previously optioned by Phoenix Pictures, who had unsuccessfully pitched the concept to Scott as a potential project.[16] Reston said, "They have built this film on the back of my intellectual property. They just read the first hundred pages and saw it has these great characters and a fantastic battle."[16]
In 2016, Reston's 1977 book, The Innocence of Joan Little: A Southern Mystery, was optioned by Paulist Productions to possibly develop as a limited series.[17]
Reston was a Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C., from 1994 to 1995, and a Global Fellow from October 2002 to December 2022.[18] He was also fellow at the American Academy in Rome.[8] In 2011, he was a resident scholar at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.[8]
Reston was a member of the Authors Guild, the Authors League of America, the Dramatists Guild of America, and PEN.[1]
Reston married Denise Brender Leary on June 12, 1971, in Hume, Virginia, at Fiery Run, the Restons' cabin.[6] She received a law degree from Duke University and is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Milton Leary of the Bronx.[6] They lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and had three children: Maeve, Hillary Reston, and Devin.[1][5][2] As of 2017, Reston lived at Martha's Vineyard.[3]
| External videos | |
|---|---|
| Interview with Reston on Fragile Innocence, September 30, 2006, C-SPAN |
Reston's book Fragile Innocence, A Father's Memoir of His Daughter's Courageous Journey (2006) is the story of his daughter Hillary's experience with a debilitative viral brain infection.[19][2]
James Reston Jr. died from pancreatic cancer in Chevy Chase, Maryland, on July 19, 2023, at age 82.[2]
In 1983, Reston received the Prix Italia and the Dupont–Columbia Award for radio documentary Father Cares: the Last of Jonestown on NPR.[1][8] He received the Valley Forge Award for Sherman's March and Vietnam in 1985.[1]
Reston's book The Conviction of Richard Nixon was developed into a play, Frost/Nixon that was, in turn, developed into a film with the same title.[20][2] Reston is depicted in the 2008 film Frost/Nixon by Sam Rockwell.[21][2]
Reston developed a theory that Lee Harvey Oswald's target was Texas Governor John Connally, not President John F. Kennedy.[22]
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