Ben Bradlee Jr.

Bradlee was a reporter and editor with The Boston Globe for 25 years and is the author of five books. He is currently working on a biography of Daniel Ellsberg, the father of whistleblowing in America, best known for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971, first to the New York Times, and then to other newspapers.

Bradlee’s most recent book, on the election of Donald Trump, was published by Little, Brown in 2018. The Forgotten: How the Abandoned People of One Pennsylvania County Elected Donald Trump and Changed America, is an in-depth examination of Trump voters in Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County, a swing county in the Northeast part of the state, which played a pivotal role in Trump’s election. The Forgotten is a sociological history, exploring why and how voters stunned the world by electing who they did -- and how America changed as a result. Bradlee’s previous book: The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams, was published by Little, Brown in December of 2013, and was a New York Times bestseller.

Bradlee spent ten years as a reporter and fifteen years as an editor at The Boston Globe. from 1979 to 2004. As deputy managing editor, he oversaw the Globe’s Pulitzer Prize–winning coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church from 2001 to 2002 and also supervised the production of a book on the subject, Betrayal, which Little, Brown published in June 2002. “Spotlight,’’ a major feature film on the Globe’s investigation, was released in the fall of 2015 and won two Academy Awards, one for best original screenplay and one for best picture. Bradlee was portrayed in the film by actor John Slattery.

As a reporter, he served on the Spotlight Team, at the State House bureau, and as the paper’s roving national correspondent from 1982 to 1986. He covered the 1988 presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis and also reported overseas for the Globe from Afghanistan, South Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Vietnam.

Bradlee has written three other books. His first was The Ambush Murders, about the case of a black activist accused—and ultimately acquitted after three trials—of killing two white policemen in Riverside, California. It was a story about small-town justice and how justice functions in emotionally charged circumstances when police investigate the deaths of two of their own. The book was published in 1979 by Dodd, Mead and later made into a television movie for CBS.

Bradlee was co-author of Prophet of Blood—the story of polygamous cult leader and self-styled prophet-of-God Ervil LeBaron, whom authorities consider responsible for up to a dozen murders in the Intermountain West and Mexico during the 1970s. The book—which explored the interplay between sex, violence, and religion in an offshoot of the Mormon Church -- was published by G.P. Putnam in 1981.

Bradlee's third book was ``Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North.'' Published in 1988, the book chronicled North and the Iran-Contra affair, and was the basis for a four-hour television mini-series which aired on CBS in May of 1989.

A graduate of Colby College, Bradlee served in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan from 1970-1972.