Staff writer is a byline that indicates that the author of the article at hand is employed by the periodical that published the article as a regular staff member, and not as a freelance writer or special contributor.

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Lawrence Wright (born August 2, 1947) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, screenwriter, staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and fellow at the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. Wright is best known as the author of the 2006 nonfiction book, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.

Background and education[link]

Wright graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School (Dallas, Texas) in 1965 and, in 2009, was inducted into Woodrow's Hall of Fame.^[1] He is a graduate of Tulane University, and taught at the American University in Cairo in Egypt for two years.^[when?]

Career[link]

[edit] The Looming Tower

Wright is the author of six books, but is best known for his 2006 book, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. A quick bestseller, The Looming Tower was awarded the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize^[2], the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and is frequently referenced by media pundits as an excellent source of background information on Al Qaeda and the September 11 attacks. The book's title is a phrase from the Quran: "Wherever you are, death will find you, even in the looming tower," which Osama bin Laden quoted three times in a videotaped speech seen as directed to the 9/11 hijackers.^[3]

Other Projects[link]

Among Wright's other books is Remembering Satan: A Tragic Case of Recovered Memory (1994), about the Paul Ingram false memory case. On June 7, 1996, Wright testified at Ingram's pardon hearing.

Wright also co-wrote the screenplay for the film The Siege (1998), which tells the story of a terrorist attack in New York City that leads to curtailed civil liberties and rounding up of Arab-Americans.^[4]

A script that Wright originally wrote for Oliver Stone was turned instead into a well-regarded Showtime movie, Noriega: God's Favorite (2000).

A documentary featuring Wright, "My Trip to Al-Qaeda", premiered on HBO in September 2010. It was based on his journeys and experience in the Middle East during his research for The Looming Tower. "My Trip to Al-Qaeda" covers topics ranging from the current state of the regime in Saudi Arabia to the historic underpinnings of 9/11.

Wright also plays the keyboard.

Bibliography[link]

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Books[link]

• City Children, Country Summer: A Story of Ghetto Children Among the Amish. Scribner. 1979. ISBN 978-0-684-16144-0. 
• In the New World: Growing up in America, 1964-1984. Alfred A. Knopf. 1987. ISBN 978-0-394-75964-7. 
• Saints and Sinners. Alfred A. Knopf. 1993. ISBN 978-0-679-76163-1. 
• Remembering Satan: A Tragic Case of Recovered Memory. Vintage Books. 1994. ISBN 978-0-679-75582-1. 
• Twins: And What They Tell Us About Who We Are. John Wiley & Sons. 1999. ISBN 978-0-471-29644-7. 
• God's Favorite: A Novel. Simon and Schuster. 2000. ISBN 978-0-684-86810-3. 
• The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Alfred A. Knopf. 2006. ISBN 978-0-375-41486-2. 

Articles[link]

• Wright, Lawrence (September 20, 2010). "The Talk of the Town: Comment: Intolerance". The New Yorker 86 (28): 47–48. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/09/20/100920taco_talk_wright. Retrieved 21 December 2011. 

References[link]

External links[link]

• Wright on NPR
• The Looming Tower Reviews at Metacritic
• AuthorViews video interview about The Looming Tower
• Audio of Paul Ingram Pardon Hearing
• Biography at lawrencewright.com
• Lawrence Wright articles at Byliner
• Lawrence Wright Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
• Reporting The Bin Laden Beat, Journalist Lawrence Wright Knows More About Al Qaeda's Leader Than Many CIA Operatives AUSTIN Sept. 9, 2007

The Right Honourable The Lord Owen CH PC FRCP
Leader of the Social Democratic Party
In office 3 March 1988 – 6 June 1990
Preceded by	Robert Maclennan
Succeeded by	Office abolished
In office 21 June 1983 – 6 August 1987
Preceded by	Roy Jenkins
Succeeded by	Robert Maclennan
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
In office 21 February 1977 – 4 May 1979
Prime Minister	James Callaghan
Preceded by	Anthony Crosland
Succeeded by	The Lord Carrington
Member of Parliament for Plymouth Devonport
In office 28 February 1974 – 9 April 1992
Preceded by	Joan Vickers
Succeeded by	David Jamieson
Member of Parliament for Plymouth Sutton
In office 31 March 1966 – 28 February 1974
Preceded by	Ian Montagu Fraser
Succeeded by	Alan Clark
Personal details
Born	(1938-07-02) 2 July 1938 (age 73) Plympton, United Kingdom
Political party	Independent (1990–present)
Other political affiliations	Labour (1960–1981) Social Democratic (1981–1990)
Spouse(s)	Deborah Schabert
Alma mater	Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge King's College London
Profession	Physician

David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen CH PC FRCP (born 2 July 1938) is a British politician.

Owen served as British Foreign Secretary from 1977 to 1979, the youngest person in over forty years to hold the post; he co-authored the failed Vance-Owen and Owen-Stoltenberg peace plans offered during the Bosnian War. In 1981, Owen was one of the "Gang of Four" who left the Labour Party to found the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Owen led the SDP from 1983 to 1987, and the continuing SDP from 1988 to 1990. He sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.

Biography[link]

In the course of his career, Owen has held, and resigned from, a number of senior posts. He first quit as Labour's spokesman on defence in 1972 in protest at the Labour leader Harold Wilson's attitude to the EEC; he left the Labour Shadow cabinet over the same issue later; and over unilateral disarmament in November 1980 when Michael Foot became Labour leader. He resigned from the Labour Party when it rejected one member, one vote in February 1981 and later as Leader of the Social Democratic Party, which he had helped to found, after the party's rank-and-file membership voted to merge with the Liberal Party.

Early life[link]

Owen was born in 1938 to Welsh parents in the town of Plympton, beside Plymouth, in Devon, England.^[1] He also has Swiss and Irish ancestry.^[1] After schooling at Mount House School www.mounthouse.devon.sch.uk, Tavistock, and Bradfield College, Berkshire,^[2] he was admitted to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in 1956 to study medicine. Owen obtained a 2:2 and was made an Honorary Fellow of the college in 1977. He began clinical training at St Thomas's Hospital in October 1959.

Owen was deeply affected by the Suez crisis of 1956, when Anthony Eden's Conservative government launched a military operation to retrieve the Suez Canal from Nasser's decision to nationalise it. At the time, aged 18, he was working on a labouring job before going to Cambridge.

Medicine and politics[link]

In 1960, Owen joined the Vauxhall branch of the Labour Party and the Fabian Society. He qualified as a doctor in 1962 and began work at St Thomas's Hospital. In 1964, he contested the Torrington seat as the Labour candidate against the Conservative Party incumbent, losing in what was a traditional Conservative-Liberal marginal. He was neurology and psychiatric registrar at St Thomas's Hospital for two years, as assistant to Dr. William Sargant, then Research Fellow on the Medical Unit doing research into Parkinsonian trauma and neuropharmacology.

Member of Parliament[link]

At the next general election, in 1966, Owen returned to his home town and was elected Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for the Plymouth Sutton constituency. In the February 1974 general election Owen became Labour MP for the adjacent Plymouth Devonport constituency, winning it from the Conservative incumbent Dame Joan Vickers by a slim margin (fewer than 500 votes). He managed to hold on to it in the 1979 general election, again by a narrow margin (1001 votes). From 1981, however, his involvement with the SDP meant he developed a large personal following in the constituency and thereafter he was re-elected as an SDP candidate with safe margins. He remained as MP for Plymouth Devonport until his elevation to a peerage in 1992.

From 1968 to 1970, Owen served as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Navy in Harold Wilson's first government. After Labour's defeat in the 1970 General Election, he became the party's Junior Defence Spokesman until 1972 when he resigned with Roy Jenkins over Labour's opposition to the European Community. On Labour's return to government in March 1974, he became Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health before being promoted to Minister of State for Health in July 1974.

In Government[link]

In September 1976, Owen was appointed by the new Prime Minister of five months, James Callaghan, as a Minister of State at the Foreign Office and was consequently admitted to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. Five months later, however, the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Crosland died suddenly and Owen was appointed his successor. Aged thirty eight, he became the youngest Foreign Secretary since Anthony Eden in 1935 and was seen as the youthful dynamic face of Labour's next generation.

As Foreign Secretary, Owen was identified with the Anglo-American plan for then-Rhodesia, which formed the basis for the Lancaster House Agreement, negotiated by his Tory successor, Lord Carrington in December 1979. The Contact Group sponsored UN Resolution 435 in 1978 on which Namibia moved to independence twelve years later. He wrote a book entitled Human Rights and championed that cause in Africa and in the Soviet Union. He has admitted to at one stage contemplating the assassination of Idi Amin while Foreign Secretary but settled instead to backing with money for arms purchases to President Nyerere of Tanzania in his armed attack on Uganda which led to the exile of Amin to Saudi Arabia.

However, 18 months after Labour lost power in 1979, the staunchly left-wing politician Michael Foot was elected party leader, despite vocal opposition from Labour Party moderates (including Owen), sparking a crisis over the party's future.

Social Democratic Party and Liberal-SDP Alliance[link]

Michael Foot's election as Labour party leader indicated that the party was likely to become more left-wing, and in 1980 committed itself to withdrawing from the EEC without even a referendum (as Labour had carried out in 1975). Also, Labour endorsed unilateral nuclear disarmament and introduced an electoral college, for leadership elections, with 40% of the college going to a block vote of the trade unions. Early in 1981, Owen and three other senior moderate Labour politicians – Roy Jenkins, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams – announced their intention to break away from the Labour Party to form a "Council for Social Democracy". The announcement became known as the Limehouse Declaration and the four as the "Gang of Four". The council they formed became the Social Democratic Party (SDP), with a collective leadership.

Twenty-eight other Labour MPs and one Conservative MP (Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler) joined the new party. In late 1981, the SDP formed the SDP-Liberal Alliance with the Liberal Party to strengthen both parties' chances in the UK's "first past the post" electoral system. In 1982, uneasy about the Alliance, Owen challenged Jenkins for the leadership of the SDP, but was defeated by 26,256 votes to 20,864. In the following year's General Election, the Alliance gained 25% of the vote, only slightly behind the Labour Party, but because of the first-past-the-post voting system, it won only 23 out of 650 seats. Although elected, Jenkins resigned the SDP leadership and Owen succeeded to it without a contest among the 6 remaining SDP MPs.

In 1982, during the Falklands War, Owen spoke at the Bilderberg Group advocating sanctions against Argentina.^[3]

Ironically, it had been the success of the Falkland War, which had put paid to any hopes that the SDP might have had of winning the 1983 election. Many of the opinion polls in late 1981 and early 1982 had shown the SDP with a comfortable lead over the Tories^{[citation needed]}, who were proving unpopular largely due to high unemployment and the early 1980s recession and ahead of the Labour Party whose democratic-socialist policies were driving away moderate voters. However, Britain's success in the conflict saw Margaret Thatcher and her Tory government surge back to the top of the opinion polls, and her position was stengthened further by the end of the year as the recession ended and more voters had faith in her economic policies. [3]

SDP leadership[link]

Owen is widely regarded as having been, at the very least, a competent party Leader. He had high popularity ratings throughout his leadership as did the SDP-Liberal Alliance. He succeeded in keeping the Party in the public eye and in maintaining its independence from the Liberals for the length of the 1983 Parliament. Moreover, under him, the SDP increased its representation from 6 to 8 seats via the by-election victories of Mike Hancock, at Portsmouth South (1984), and Rosie Barnes, at Greenwich (1987).

However the progress of the SDP-Liberal Alliance as a whole was hampered with policy splits between the two parties, first over the miners' strike (1984-5) where Owen and most of the SDP favoured a fairly tough line but the Liberals preferred compromise and negotiation. More significantly the Alliance had a dispute over the future of Britain's independent nuclear deterrent. Here Owen and the SDP favoured replacing of Polaris with Trident as a matter of some importance, where most Liberals were either indifferent to the issue or committed disarmers. The SDP favoured a radical social market economy, whilst the Liberals mostly favoured a more interventionist, corporate style approach. The cumulative effect of these divisions was to make the Alliance appear less credible as a potential government in the eyes of the electorate.

Moreover, Owen, unlike Jenkins, faced an increasingly moderate Labour Party under Neil Kinnock and a dynamic Conservative government. The 1987 general election was as disappointing for the Alliance as the 1983 election and it lost one seat. Nevertheless, it won over 23% of the vote - at that time, the second largest third force vote in British politics since 1929.

Full parties' merger[link]

In 1987 immediately after the election, the Liberal leader David Steel proposed a full merger of the Liberal and SDP parties and was supported for the SDP by Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers. Owen rejected this notion outright, on the grounds that he and other Social Democrats wished to remain faithful to social democracy as it was practised within Western Europe, and it was unlikely that any merged party would be able to do this, even if it was under his leadership. Nevertheless the majority of the SDP membership supported the merger.

The Liberal Party and SDP merged to form the Social and Liberal Democrats (SLD), soon renamed the Liberal Democrats.

At the request of two of the remaining SDP MPs, John Cartwright and Rosie Barnes, Owen continued to lead a much smaller continuing SDP with three MPs in total. The party polled well at its first election, its candidate coming a close second in the 1989 Richmond by-election, but thereafter a string of poor and ultimately disastrous by-election results followed, including coming behind the Official Monster Raving Loony Party in the Bootle by-election of May 1990, prompting Owen to wind up the party in 1990. Owen blamed the SDP's demise on the reforms which had been taking place in the Labour Party since the election of Neil Kinnock as leader in 1983.^[4]

Some branches, however, continued to function using the SDP name; Bridlington's was still extant in 2006.

Lord Holme later blamed Owen for the Alliance's failure to make a breakthrough at the 1987 general election, believing that a merged party would have performed much better and possibly gained more votes and seats than Labour.^[5]

Political allegiances as a life peer[link]

After winding up the re-formed SDP, Owen announced his intent to stand down as an MP at the next General Election. He then served the remainder of his term as an independent MP and after the 1992 General Election was made a life peer with the title "Baron Owen, of the City of Plymouth",^[6] in Letters Patent dated 30 June 1992. As a member of the House of Lords, he is called "Lord Owen" and sits as a crossbencher.

During the April 1992 election campaign, Owen writing in The Mail on Sunday newspaper advised voters to vote Liberal Democrat where they had a chance of victory and to vote Conservative rather than let Neil Kinnock become Prime Minister. Owen maintained his long standing position that he would never join the Conservative Party, although the memoirs of at least three of John Major's cabinet ministers refer to Major being quite keen to appoint Owen to his cabinet, but threats of resignation from within the Cabinet prevented him from doing so. When asked in a conversation with Woodrow Wyatt on 18 December 1988 whether she would have Owen in her government if approached by him, Margaret Thatcher replied: "Well, not straight away. I don't think I would do it straight away. He was very good on the Northern Ireland terrorist business. He's wasting his life now. It's so tragic. He's got real ability and it ought to be used".^[7] In another conversation with Wyatt on 4 June 1990 Thatcher said Owen's natural home was the Conservative Party.^[8][9] He was approached privately by Tony Blair, then leader of the Opposition, in 1996 on whether he was ready to support New Labour. Lord Owen declined mainly because he disagreed with Tony Blair's intention, as Prime Minister, to join the eurozone.^[10]

In May 2005, he was approached two days before the General Election by someone very close to Tony Blair to endorse Labour. He declined, because though he did not want a Conservative government, he wanted the Liberal Democrats to do sufficiently well to ensure a greatly reduced Labour majority.^[11]

In September 2007, it was widely reported in the British press that Lord Owen had met the new Prime Minister Gordon Brown and afterwards had refused to rule out supporting Labour at the next general election.^[12] It later emerged that he could have been part of the GOAT (Government of all talents) initiative advising on the NHS but Lord Owen declined. In October 2009 he wrote an article in the Times predicting that the Conservatives, then well ahead in the opinion polls, were unlikely to win an outright majority. He helped create the web-based Charter 2010 to explain and promote the potential of a hung parliament. The website campaign was launched in January 2010 while the Conservatives still appeared on course to win outright. Within weeks the polls changed and the website became a major source of information about hung parliaments. In May 2010 the Sunday Times called Owen "the prophet of the coalition".

In January 2011, Owen revealed that his "heart was with Labour" and that he looked forward to the time when he could vote Labour again. He added that what hampered him in the past was the way the Labour Party elects its leader and it was very necessary for the electoral college arrangement to be reformed and he refused to rule out joining the Labour Party the future. He vigorously opposed the Health and Social Care Bill in 2011-12. In a pamphlet, "Fatally Flawed" he demonstrated that far from the internal market, which he had championed in the 1980s, the Bill introduced an external market and he worked closely with the Labour Front Bench in the House of Lords.

Subsequent international role[link]

In August 1992, Owen was British Prime Minister John Major's choice to succeed Lord Carrington as the EU co-chairman of the Conference for the Former Yugoslavia, along with Cyrus Vance, the former U.S. Secretary of State as the UN co-chairman.

Private Eye, the British satirical magazine, playfully alluded towards Owen's legendary tendency towards self-destruction. "It's a lost cause", says the bubble emanating from Major's mouth. "I'm your man", says the bubble from Owen's mouth. The Labour Shadow Foreign Minister, Jack Cunningham, greeted Major's appointment of Owen in the British House of Commons by saying that the Prime Minister's choice "was regarded as somewhat eccentric by [MPs] and myself - he [Owen] is known for many qualities, but not as a mediator. Indeed he has Balkanised a few political parties himself" ^[13]

Owen became a joint author of the Vance-Owen Peace Plan [VOPP], in January 1993, which made a heroic effort to move away from the presumption of ethnic partition. ^[14] According to America's last ambassador to Yugoslavia, the Bosnian Government were ready to accept the VOPP, but unfortunately the Clinton Administration delayed in its support, thus missing a chance to get it launched. [Origins of the Catastrophe (1999) Warren Zimmermann p222]. The VOPP was eventually agreed in Athens in May 1993 under intense pressure by all parties including Bosnian Serb leader Karadžić but then rejected later by the Bosnian-Serb Assembly meeting in Pale, after Karadžić insisted that the Assembly had the right to ratify the agreement. After Vance's withdrawal, Owen and Thorvald Stoltenberg brokered the EU Action Plan of December 1993. They both helped the Contact Group of the US/UK/France/Germany and Russia to present its plan in the summer of 1994.

In early 1994, the European Parliament had voted by 160 votes to 90, with 2 abstentions, for Owen's dismissal, but he was supported by all 15 EU Member State governments. There was a perception in America that Owen was "not fulfilling his function as an impartial negotiator." [Unfinest Hour, p167]. Owen was made a Companion of Honour for his services in the former Yugoslavia in 1994.

In January 1995, Lord Owen wrote to President François Mitterrand as President of the European Union to say that he wished to step down before the end of the French presidency. At the end of May 1995, he was succeeded by the former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt. "Had I been younger, I would probably have resigned when the Americans ditched the Vance-Owen Peace Plan" [Unfinest Hour p157-8].

Owen testified as a witness of the court in the trial of former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milošević.

Lord Owen has continued to speak out on issues of international affairs including on nuclear proliferation and constrained intervention. In 2011 he was the first politician to call for a "no-fly zone" over Libya. In an editorial on 27 February 2011 the Sunday Times said, "It was a man who has not been in office for nearly 32 years - Lord Owen, the former foreign secretary - who has been the most eloquent British voice over Libya. His call for a no-fly-zone....struck the right note".

Europe[link]

Owen is a strong supporter of Britain's membership of the European Union but also opposes many of the more dramatic proposals for integration.

As chairman of New Europe, he was the co-leader of the 'no to the Euro' campaign with Business for Sterling, which ceased when the UK Government declared in 2005 that Euro membership was off the agenda following the defeat of the EU Constitution in referendums in France and the Netherlands.

He has also called for a referendum before Britain's ratification of the Lisbon treaty, and expressed concerns about proposals for the creation of a 'European Rapid Reaction Force'. He is a self-described Anti-Federalist. In February 2010, he wrote a pamphlet for the Social Market Foundation thinktank entitled "EU Social Market and Social Policy" He supports the European Referendum Act of 2011.

Lord Owen continued to argue for engagement, criticising David Cameron's so-called 'veto' in December 2011 arguing instead for a formal non-eurozone grouping with the right to join or leave the eurozone.

Enterprises and affiliations[link]

Lord Owen was chairman of Yukos International UK BV, a division of the former Russian petroleum company Yukos, from 2002 to 2005.^{[citation needed]} and a member of the board of Abbott Laboratories, a US healthcare company, from 1996-2011. He is currently non-executive chairman of Europe Steel Ltd and consultant to Gallagher Holdings, owned by Alisher Usmanov. In late 2009, Owen accepted a seat on the board of Texas-based Hyperdynamics Corporation, an oil concern with an exclusive lease to an offshore area of the Republic of Guinea in west Africa..^{[citation needed]}

Owen was the Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, from 1996-2009. He has written extensively on the interaction between illness and politics, with a particular emphasis on the 'hubris syndrome', a condition affecting those at the pinnacle of power. The concept has been most fully developed in a co-authored paper in Brain <David Owen and Jonathan Davidson, "Hubris Syndrome: An Acquired Personality Disorder? A study of US Presidents and UK Prime Ministers over the last 100 years" Brain 2009: 132; 1407-1410>. The concept of hubris syndrome has been analysed by Professor Gerald Russell.^[15]

Personal life[link]

He married Deborah Owen (née Schabert), an American literary agent, in 1968. They have two sons and one daughter, Tristan, Gareth and Lucy.

Selected publications[link]

• David Owen, The Politics of Defence (Jonathan Cape and Taplinger Pub. Co, 1972)
• David Owen, "In Sickness and in Health: The Politics of Medicine" (Quartet Books, 1976)
• David Owen, Human Rights (Jonathan Cape and W.W. Norton & Company, 1978)
• David Owen, Face the Future (Jonathan Cape and Praeger, 1981)
• David Owen, A Future That Will Work (Viking 1984, Praeger, 1985)
• David Owen, "A United Kingdom" (Penguin Books, 1986)
• David Owen to Kenneth Harris, Personally Speaking (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987)
• David Owen, Our NHS" (Pan Books, 1988)
• David Owen, Time to Declare (Michael Joseph, 1992)
• David Owen, Balkan Odyssey (Victor Gollancz, Harcourt Brace 1995)
• David Owen, The Hubris Syndrome: Bush, Blair and the Intoxication of Power (Politico's, 2007)
• David Owen, In Sickness and in Power: Illness in Heads of Government During the Last 100 Years (Methuen, 2008)
• David Owen, Time to Declare: Second Innings (Politico's, 2009) - revised and updated abridgement of Time to Declare and Balkan Odyssey
• David Owen, "Nuclear Papers" (Liverpool University Press, 2009)

References[link]

This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (December 2007)

Sources

• Harris, Kenneth (1988). David Owen: Personally Speaking. Pan Books Ltd. ISBN 0-330-30608-1. 

External links[link]

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by David Owen
• The David Owen Archive at the University of Liverpool
• David Owen resigns as SDP leader (BBC News On This Day webpage, including news report footage)
• Lord Owen on the House of Lords site.
• David Owen interviewed by Alyssa McDonald on New Statesman.

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Farhad Manjoo in 2008

Farhad Manjoo (born 1978) is an American journalist and author. He has been a staff writer for Slate magazine since 2008 and a regular on-air contributor for National Public Radio since 2009.^[1]

Life and career[link]

Manjoo graduated from Cornell University in 2000. While there, he wrote for and then served as editor-in-chief of the Cornell Daily Sun student newspaper. He wrote for Wired News before taking a staff position at Salon.com. In July 2008, Manjoo announced he had accepted a job at Slate magazine, writing a twice-weekly technology column.

Manjoo frequently writes on technology and new media,^[2] politics,^[3] and controversies in journalism.^[4] He is the author of True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-fact Society.^[5][6][7]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Farhad Manjoo articles via Slate.com
• Farhad Manjoo articles via Salon.com
• Farhad Manjoo articles via byliner.com
• Farhad Manjoo pieces on NPR
• Farhad Manjoo blog
• Helen Bailey and Farhad Manjoo via NYTIMES.com

This article about a United States journalist born in the 1970s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Damon Lindelof
Damon Lindelof in 2012
Born	(1973-04-24) April 24, 1973 (age 39) Teaneck, New Jersey
Nationality	American
Occupation	Executive producer screenwriter

Damon Laurence Lindelof (born April 24, 1973) is an American television writer and executive, most recently noted as the co-creator and executive producer for the television series Lost. He has written for and produced Crossing Jordan, and wrote for Nash Bridges, Wasteland, and the MTV anthology series Undressed. Before these, he worked on reviewing scripts at Paramount, Fox, and Alan Ladd studios.

Early life[link]

Lindelof is a native of Teaneck, New Jersey, where he attended Teaneck High School, a school whose diverse student body he credits with expanding his horizons as a writer.^[1] He celebrated his bar mitzvah in Teaneck, where he would join his family at synagogue on the Sabbath, and recounted how the fact that "I was a Jewish white kid growing up in Teaneck, but at the same time, I had African and Filipino and Asian friends and to have that experience all through high school while getting an awesome education was wonderful."^[2] Lindelof attended film school at New York University, performing briefly in the band Petting Zoo, and moved to Los Angeles after graduating.

An early boost to his writing career came in 1999, when he was selected as a semifinalist for a Nicholl Fellowship for his screenplay Perfectionists.^[3]

Lindelof is a self-professed Stephen King fan and has placed many references to King's work into Lost, as well as mentioning within the Official Lost Podcast that The Stand serves as a huge influence. Lindelof has been quoted as saying that the graphic novel Watchmen, written by Alan Moore, is the greatest piece of popular fiction ever produced, and its effect on Lost is evident many times in the show.^[4] He has also mentioned Twin Peaks as a big influence for Lost.^[5] J.J. Abrams has often cited Patrick McGoohan's similarly allegorical sci-fi/spy series The Prisoner as another major influence on Lost. Lindelof lists his favorite six films, in no particular order, as Touch of Evil, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Pulp Fiction, The Shining, Bambi, and The Godfather Part II.^[6]

Career[link]

Lindelof is the writer of the comic book miniseries Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk for Marvel Comics, which takes place in the Ultimate Marvel universe and began publication in January 2006. Despite being a six-issue miniseries, production was suspended after the second issue in February 2006 due to Lindelof's heavy workload elsewhere; however, the last of the scripts were submitted to Marvel in 2008 and the series resumed publication in March 2009.

[edit] Lost

He was an executive producer and joint showrunner (alongside Carlton Cuse) on Lost. Lindelof and the Lost writing staff won the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2006 ceremony for their work on the first and second seasons.^[7] He was nominated for the WGA Award for Best Dramatic Series a further three times; at the February 2007 ceremony for his work on the second and third seasons,^[8] at the February 2009 ceremony for his work on the fourth season^[9] and at the February 2010 ceremony for his work on the fifth season.^[10] Lindelof and his co-writer Drew Goddard were also nominated for the WGA Award for Best Episodic Drama at the February 2008 ceremony for writing the episode "Flashes Before Your Eyes".^[11]

Other projects[link]

Lindelof is co-screenwriter of Ridley Scott's Prometheus, scheduled for June 2012 release.

He is also a producer in the show Once Upon a Time, which was created by former Lost writers. He served as co-producer on the 2009 film, Star Trek. Along with producing the sequel, he also co-wrote the screenplay with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. He also co-wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of the comic series Cowboys & Aliens with the duo, directed by Jon Favreau.

It was believed that after the conclusion of Lost, Lindelof and J. J. Abrams would write and produce a film adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, but Lindelof squelched this notion in a late 2000s USA Today, commenting, "After working six years on 'Lost,' the last thing I want to do is spend the next seven years adapting one of my favorite books of all time. I'm such a massive Stephen King fan that I'm terrified of screwing it up. I'd do anything to see those movies written by someone else. My guess is they will get made because they're so incredible. But not by me."^[12]

In December 2008, Lindelof guest starred in an episode of The Write Environment, a direct-to-DVD series featuring in-depth, candid one-on-one interviews with some of TV's most prolific and well-known series creator/writers.

Personal life[link]

Lindelof has stated that he is a lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party.^[13]

[edit] Lost episodes (as writer)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Damon Lindelof

• Damon Lindelof at the Internet Movie Database
• Damon Lindelof interviews, March 28, July 17, and August 21, 2005, LostTV-Forum.com
• Damon Lindelof podcast, Marvel.com