Shipler, David K., 1942-

Dates

• Existence: 1942-

Biography

David Karr Shipler was born on Dec. 3, 1942. He graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA in sociology in 1964. After graduating with distinction, Shipler joined the US Navy as an ensign and served on a destroyer in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Red Sea and Indian Ocean for two years. In 1966, he joined the New York Times as a news clerk but within two years was promoted to city staff reporter with assignments in politics, housing and poverty. He won awards from the American Political Science Association and the New York Newspaper Guild for his work.

From 1973-1975, Shipler served as a New York Times correspondent in Saigon, covering South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Burma. With the fall of Saigon, he returned to New York where he was offered the opportunity to go to Russia. In preparation he spent a semester at the Russian Institute of Columbia University studying Russian language, Soviet politics, economics and history. He joined the Moscow Bureau of the Times in 1975, and was promoted to Bureau Chief in 1977. He left Moscow in 1979, to become the Bureau Chief in Jerusalem, a position he held until 1984.

In 1983, Shipler published his first book "Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams," which won the Overseas Press Club Award that year for best book on foreign affairs. His next book, "Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land," written while he was a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institute, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. From 1985 to 1988, Shipler was the Chief Diplomatic Correspondent of the Washington Bureau for the New York Times, before becoming a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writing on transitions to democracy in Russia and Eastern Europe for the New Yorker and other publications. In 1997, Shipler published his next book "A Country of Strangers: Black and Whites in America" based on five years of research into stereotyping and interactions across racial lines. His next book "The Working Poor: Invisible in America" was a bestseller in 2004 and 2005 and a finalist for the 2005 National Book Circle Award. In 2011 he published "The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties."

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