Background
Peter Braestrup was born on June 8, 1929 in New York City, New York, United States. He was a son of Carl Bjorn Braestrup, a physicist who was the first to alert the dangers of exposure to radiation, and Elsebet (Kampmann) Braestrup.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0891415319/?tag=2022091-20
1977
https://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-as-History-Peter-Braestrup/dp/0819136549/?tag=2022091-20
1983
https://www.amazon.com/Wilson-Quarterly-Spring-1985-Number/dp/B000O668Z6/?tag=2022091-20
1985
correspondent editor historian journalist
Peter Braestrup was born on June 8, 1929 in New York City, New York, United States. He was a son of Carl Bjorn Braestrup, a physicist who was the first to alert the dangers of exposure to radiation, and Elsebet (Kampmann) Braestrup.
Peter Braestrup studied at the Yale University which he graduated in 1951 with a degree in English literature.
Eight years later, Braestrup received a one-year Nieman fellowship for Journalism from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University.
Peter Braestrup’s carrer started from the two-year military service at the Army National Guard in 1948 which was followed by the service at the U.S. Marines during the Korean war. He was seriously injured in battle and discharged in 1953 with the rank of first lieutenant.
The same year, Braestrup became a contributing editor and a reporter at Time magazine – the posts which he had held for four years. There, he created articles on politics, labor, farming, civil rights and national affairs. Then, he had worked for two years as an investigative reporter for the New York Herald Tribune.
Braestrup retired from the Army National Guard at the rank of captain in 1960. The same year, when Peter joined the New York Times in 1960, he became a correspondent in Algiers, Paris, Bangkok, and Washington, D.C. He switched to the Washington Post in 1968 as a Saigon bureau chief covering Congress and the Pentagon and national news until 1973.
Abandoning the daily journalism in 1973, Braestrup pursued his career at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars where two years later he established a magazine named The Wilson Quarterly and joined its staff as founding editor.
In 1977, Peter Braestrup used his military experience to cover the war in Vietnam, including the Tet offensive in 1968. He published his most notable work, the two-volume book called Big Story: How the U.S. Press and Television Reported and Analyzed the Tet Crisis of 1968 which discusses how American journalism fell short in its coverage of the Tet Offensive. Each volume contains more than 700 pages.
At the end of his life, Braestrup was a senior editor and director of communications for the Library of Congress, beginning in 1989. He also participated on panels that explored the media’s role in war.
Quotes from others about the person
"He thought that what was needed was a magazine that would report on the world of ideas and scholarship for a lay readership." - Jay Tolson, on of the editors of the Wilson Quarterly magazine
"Peter was not only a dear friend, but also an astute and important adviser to me and others in the Library.", "He played a major role in the Library's outreach efforts. His wide range of experiences and journalistic integrity made him an effective leader of the Library's Office of Communications." - James H. Billington, a librarian from Library of Congress
Peter Braestrup had two wives. His first wife became Angelica Hollins in 1959. The couple had lived together for twenty-six years and had three children whose names are Angelica, Elizabeth Kate and Carl Peter.
In 1989, Braestrup married Sandra Cornelia Newing.
Besides his own children, Peter adopted four children – two girls, Martha Meyers and Linda Engleby-Nash and two boys whose names are David Nash and Stuart Nash.
Braestrup has in total fifteen grandchildren – seven grandchildren and eight stepgrandchildren.
