Trivia

After returning from Vietnam he wrote an unpublished war novel, Ivory Fields,.

Wrote his first book, The Road to Yuba City: A Journey into the Juan Corona Murders, while at the University of Iowa.

Attended Harvard College, originally majoring in political science, but switching to English after taking a course in creative writing from Robert Fitzgerald. He received an AB degree from Harvard in 1967.

Receiving a ROTC commission, he entered the United States Army, rising to the rank of first lieutenant. He served as a military intelligence officer in Vietnam from 1967 to 1969, receiving a Bronze Star, but did not see combat.

Received a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, 1982, for The Soul of a New Machine.

Received an MFA degree from the University of Iowa in 1974.

Graduated from Phillips Academy in 1963.

Received the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award, 1990, for Among Schoolchildren.

Received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, 2001.

Received a National Book Award for Nonfiction, 1982, for The Soul of a New Machine.

Received the Ambassador Book Award in American Studies, 1990, for Among Schoolchildren.

Received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, 1989-1990, for Among Schoolchildren.

In Fall 2010 he was selected as the first A. M. Rosenthal Writer-in-Residence at the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. At the Center he worked with his longtime editor, Richard Todd, on a book about writing, titled Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction.

Received the Lettre Ulysses Award (2nd prize), 2004, for Mountains Beyond Mountains.

He moved to rural Western Massachusetts after completing a creative writing master's program in Northampton, Mass.