Tom reiss biography

For telling the long-overlooked story of Alex Dumas, the French Revolutionary soldier whose exploits and fate inspired his novelist son, Tom Reiss  ’86 today received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. The Pulitzer committee called The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (Crown) “a compelling story of a forgotten swashbuckling hero of mixed race whose bold exploits were captured by his son, Alexander Dumas, in famous 19th century novels.” (For a taste of the book, read Reiss’s Vita of General Dumas from this magazine’s November-December 2012 issue.) The book was previously a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Reiss’s earlier biography, The Orientalist, the story of Lev Nussimbaum, “a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince and became a best-selling author in Nazi Germany”—became an international bestseller.

Three alumni also numbered among the finalists for this year’s prizes:

• Adams University Professor emeritus Bernard B
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  Tom Reiss

  American author, historian, and journalist (born 1964)

  Not to be confused with Tom Rice.

  Tom Reiss (born May 5, 1964) is an American author, historian, and journalist. He is the author of three nonfiction books, the latest of which is The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (2012), which received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. His previous books are Führer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Nazi (1996), the first inside exposé of the European neo-Nazi movement; and The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life (2005), which became an international bestseller. As a journalist, Reiss has written for The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

  Early life and education

  Reiss was born on May 5, 1964, in New York City, to Jewish parents.^[1] He spent his first years of his life in Washington Heights in Manhattan and then in San Antonio and Dallas, Texas, where his father worked as an Air Force neurosurgeon. After that, his family moved t

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  Reiss, Tom 1963(?)–

  PERSONAL: Born c. 1963; married; children.

  ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

  CAREER: Writer and journalist. Political and cultural journalist for New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and New Yorker.

  WRITINGS:

  (With Ingo Hasselbach) Führer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Nazi, Random House (New York, NY), 1996.

  The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life (biography), Random House (New York, NY), 2005.

  SIDELIGHTS: The grandson of Holocaust victims and the son of survivors, Tom Reiss has always had an interest in the horrors of Nazi Germany. In a curious development, however, his first book was a collaboration with a man who had a much more ambiguous relationship with the legacy of Nazism. Führer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Nazi recounts the story of Ingo Hasselbach, who was a great admirer of the Third Reich before he experienced a dramatic change in outlook. Reiss described their different backgrounds and subsequent meeting in People: "While I s