Geoffrey Champion Ward (born 1940) is an American editor, author, historian and writer of scripts for American history documentaries for public television. He is the author or co-author of 19 books, including 10 companion books to the documentaries he has written. He is the winner of seven Emmy Awards.
Ward was born in Newark, Ohio, and is a graduate of Oberlin College (1962), where he majored in art. [1] He had initially planned to be a painter. [1] His father was F. Champion Ward, educator and a vice-president of the Ford Foundation. [2] Ward spent some of his boyhood years in India. [1] Ward's great-grandfather was Ferdinand Ward, a 19th-century swindler whose ponzi scheme lead to a financial crash which bankrupted many investors, including Ulysses S. Grant and Thomas Nast. Ward wrote a book about the story of his great-grandfather, A Disposition to be Rich, in 2012. [3]
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Ward was the founding editor of Audience Magazine (1970–1973) and the editor of American Heritage Magazine (1977–1982). His 1989 biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt, A First-class Temperament: the Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Ward has been a long-time collaborator of American documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. Ward describes being asked to write the script for Huey Long after meeting Burns at his house in Walpole, New Hampshire. [1] The principal writer of the television mini-series The Civil War (1990), Ward has collaborated with its co-producer Ken Burns on most of the documentaries he has made since, including Jazz , Baseball , The War , and The Vietnam War . The films with Burns have garnered him five Emmy Awards. He has won an additional two Emmys for The Kennedys (1992), and TR, The Story of Theodore Roosevelt (1996). [4] His script for the documentary Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson , won the Writers Guild of America Award in 2005, [5] and the accompanying book won the 2006 William Hill Sports Book of the Year [6] [7] and the Anisfield-Wolf Award for best biography. [8]
In 2006, the Organization of American Historians gave Ward their Friend of History Award for his outstanding contributions to American history:
Over the last twenty years Geoffrey Ward's writings on American History have had a greater influence and reached a wider audience than those of any other American writer and historian. [His] work is always his own, but he has also helped free ideas that otherwise might have been imprisoned in the academy and helped them find a wider world. He has helped academic historians understand the possibilities, limits, and demands of what has become the medium through which most Americans now get their history." [9]
The 2011 Burns/Ward collaboration, Prohibition , brought Ward his seventh Emmy for Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming. [10] Since that project, he worked with Ken Burns on The Roosevelts: An Intimate History , a seven-part documentary miniseries depicting the lives of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Eleanor Roosevelt, (broadcast on PBS in September 2014), and a multi-part TV series "The Vietnam War", with Lynn Novick and Ken Burns (broadcast on PBS in September 2017).
In 2012, Ward published a biography of his great-grandfather Ferdinand Ward (1851–1925), known as the greatest swindler of the Gilded Age. A Disposition to be Rich was written with the assistance of private family materials.
Ward spent some of his boyhood years in India and has remained involved with India and in Indian issues. Working and writing about the ongoing struggle to save the Bengal tiger in the wild has meant friendships with great tiger men like Fateh Singh Rathore [11] and Billy Arjan Singh. [12] His essays and pieces on India have appeared in a wide array of publications, including Geo , Audubon , National Geographic , Smithsonian , Aperture and others. In 2011, he wrote an introduction for the book Varanasi: Portrait of a Civilization, (Collins, India,) by the photographer Raghu Rai, with whom he has collaborated on magazine pieces. He is currently at work on a book about the partition of the Indian subcontinent. [13]
Ward is involved in the world of jazz and has collaborated with Wynton Marsalis [14] and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. After the documentary Jazz was aired on public television, in an interview in the New York Times, Ward spoke of playing West End Blues by Louis Armstrong, as a 15-year-old student, so often that the bartender in the Paris cafe across the street from his student housing called him 'Satchmo': "I must have played it a thousand times," he remembered. "I think jazz music is so important to this country.... I find these characters, Armstrong, Ellington, working in a Jim Crow world, genuinely heroic."" [15]
Ward is married to the writer [16] and social/environmental activist [17] Diane Raines Ward. He has three children.
When he was nine years old, Ward contracted poliomyelitis, and wears leg braces. [18] He describes hearing Louis Armstrong's recording of "West End Blues" on the radio while in the hospital and noted its profound impact on his life. [1] He later cited Franklin Roosevelt as a source of inspiration on how to overcome his handicap. [19] When interviewed for The Roosevelts, Ward "was determined not to get emotional", as Ken Burns said later, when discussing the "terror" felt by FDR during his ordeal in 1921; Burns did not mention Ward's disability on camera, but he had waited until the end of their interview before getting to questions on FDR's polio, at which point Ward "was taken aback and the emotions caught him". [20]
Ward considers British broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough to be "the best television writer in the history of the medium." [1]
Ward describes himself as a "lifelong liberal Democrat." [1]
Kenneth Lauren Burns is an American filmmaker and historian known for his documentary films and television series, many of which chronicle American history and culture. His work is often produced in association with WETA-TV and/or the National Endowment for the Humanities and distributed by PBS.
The Civil War is a 1990 American television documentary miniseries created by Ken Burns about the American Civil War. It was the first broadcast to air on PBS for five consecutive nights, from September 23 to 27, 1990.
Peter Coyote is an American actor, director, screenwriter, author and narrator of films, theatre, television, and audiobooks. He worked on films, such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Cross Creek (1983), Jagged Edge (1985), Bitter Moon (1992), Kika (1993), Patch Adams (1998), Erin Brockovich (2000), A Walk to Remember (2002) and Femme Fatale (2002).
Orie Frank Trumbauer was an American jazz saxophonist of the 1920s and 1930s. His main instrument was the C melody saxophone, a now-uncommon instrument between an alto and tenor saxophone in size and pitch. He also played alto saxophone, bassoon, clarinet and several other instruments.
Jazz is a 2001 television documentary miniseries directed by Ken Burns. It was broadcast on PBS in 2001 and was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series. Its chronological and thematic episodes provided a history of jazz, emphasizing innovative composers and musicians and American history.
The War is a seven-part American television documentary miniseries about World War II from the perspective of the United States. The program was directed by American filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, written by Geoffrey Ward, and narrated primarily by Keith David. It premiered on September 23, 2007. The world premiere of the series took place at the Palace Theater in Luverne, Minnesota, one of the towns featured in the documentary. It was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Jon Ellis Meacham is an American writer, reviewer, historian and presidential biographer who is serving as the Canon Historian of the Washington National Cathedral since November 7, 2021. A former executive editor and executive vice president at Random House, he is a contributing writer to The New York Times Book Review, a contributing editor to Time magazine, and a former editor-in-chief of Newsweek. He is the author of several books. He won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. He holds the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Endowed Chair in American Presidency at Vanderbilt University.
The Francis Parkman Prize, named after Francis Parkman, is awarded by the Society of American Historians for the best book in American history each year. Its purpose is to promote literary distinction in historical writing. The Society of American Historians is an affiliate of the American Historical Association.
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson is a 2005 biographical documentary by filmmaker Ken Burns, based on the 2004 nonfiction book of the same name by Geoffrey C. Ward. It describes the life story of Jack Johnson, the first African-American Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World. It also describes racism and social inequality during the Jim Crow era, against which Johnson struggled.
Ric Burns is an American documentary filmmaker and writer. He has written, directed and produced historical documentaries since the 1990s, beginning with his collaboration on the celebrated PBS series The Civil War (1990), which he produced with his older brother Ken Burns and wrote with Geoffrey Ward.
Margaret Lynch Suckley was a sixth cousin, intimate friend, and confidante of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as an archivist for the first American presidential library. She was one of four women at the Little White House with Roosevelt in Warm Springs, Georgia, when he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1945.
William Edward Leuchtenburg is an American historian. He is the William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a leading scholar of the life and career of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The Congress is a 1988 documentary film directed by the Emmy Award-winning director Ken Burns. The Florentine Films production, which focuses on the United States Congress, aired on PBS on March 20, 1989.
The West, sometimes marketed as Ken Burns Presents: The West, is a 1996 television documentary miniseries about the American Old West. It was directed by Stephen Ives and featured Ken Burns as executive producer. It was first broadcast on PBS on eight consecutive nights from September 15 to 22, 1996.
John Milton Cooper Jr. is an American historian, author, and educator. He specializes in late 19th and early 20th-century American political and diplomatic history with a particular focus on presidential history. His 2009 biography of Woodrow Wilson was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and biographer Patricia O'Toole has called him "the world's greatest authority on Woodrow Wilson." Cooper is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery is a 1997 television documentary miniseries about the Lewis and Clark Expedition directed and co-produced by Ken Burns. It is produced by Burns' Florentine Films for Washington, DC PBS station WETA-TV, first aired on PBS on November 4 and 5, 1997.
Lynn Novick is an American director and producer of documentary films, widely known for her work with Ken Burns.
The Roosevelts: An Intimate History is a 2014 American documentary television miniseries directed and produced by Ken Burns. It covers the lives and times of the three most prominent members of the Roosevelt family, Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican and the 26th President of the United States; Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, the 32nd President of the United States, and fifth cousin of Theodore; and Eleanor Roosevelt, the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, a niece of Theodore, and wife of Franklin. As a result of the influence of Theodore and Franklin as Presidents, as well as Eleanor as First Lady, a modern democratic state of equal opportunity was begun in the United States. The series begins with the birth of Theodore in 1858 and ends with the death of Eleanor in 1962.
The Vietnam War is a 10-part American television documentary series about the Vietnam War written by Geoffrey C. Ward and directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The first episode premiered on PBS on September 17, 2017. The script is by Geoffrey Ward, and the series is narrated by Peter Coyote. This series is one of the few PBS series to carry a TV-MA rating.
The U.S. and the Holocaust is a 2022 three-part documentary miniseries about the United States' response to the Holocaust. The series was directed by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, and was written by frequent Burns collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward.
