Ron Powers

Background

Ron Powers was born on November 18, 1941, in Hannibal, Missouri, the United States.

Education

Ron was educated at the University of Missouri.

Career

As a Hannibal native, Powers has had a lifelong fascination with Mark Twain. Powers has written two books on Twain & one on the region that raised him - Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain, Mark Twain: A Life and Tom & Huck Don’t Live Here Anymore, a narrative examination of two killings in the town of Hannibal perpetrated by adolescent boys. It was a finalist for a Los Angeles Times book prize.

For his book, Flags of Our Fathers, Powers collaborated with James Bradley, a son of one of the six flag raisers on Iwo Jima. Flags of Our Fathers explores each flag raiser’s boyhood, military service, experiences on Iwo Jima, and - for the survivors - later life and fate. The book was No. 1 on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction list for five weeks and remained on the bestseller list for 46 weeks. The movie version, produced partly by Steven Spielberg and with Clint Eastwood directing, premiered in October 2006.

In 2017, Powers published No One Cares About Crazy People, which offers a searching, rich narrative of the social history of mental illness in America paired with the deeply personal story of his two sons' battles with schizophrenia.

Powers has taught for the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Salzburg Seminar in Salzburg, Austria, and at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.

He has been published in The New York Times Book Review, The Smithsonian, The Kenyon Review, The Columbia Journalism Review, Preservation Magazine, The New England Review/Breadloaf Quarterly, Esquire, and Playboy.

Achievements

• In 1973, Powers was the first TV critic to win the Pulitzer Prize. He was the media commentator for CBS News Sunday Morning for five years, for which he earned an Emmy award, and has hosted numerous documentaries.
  
  He also won New England Literary Lights Award from Boston Public Library in 2011

Works

More photos

• book

  • Far From Home: Life and Loss in Two American Towns

    (A Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author chronicles the...)

    1991
  • No One Cares About Crazy People

    (New York Times-bestselling author Ron Powers offers a sea...)

    2017
  • Toot-toot-tootsie, good-bye

    (A baseball commentator in the 1950s witnesses radical soc...)

    1981
  • The Beast, the Eunuch and the Glass-eyed Child: Television in the 80's

    (In this lively & provocative collection of essays, vetera...)

    1990
  • Dangerous Water: A Biography Of The Boy Who Became Mark Twain

    (While Mark Twain remains one of our most quintessentially...)

    1999
  • The Cruel Radiance: Notes of a Prosewriter in a Visual Age

    (A collection of lectures, fiction excerpts, and criticism...)

    1994
  • Mark Twain: A Life

    (Ron Powers’s tour de force has been widely acclaimed as t...)

    2005
  • Tom and Huck Don't Live Here Anymore

    (Ron Powers' hometown is Hannibal, Missouri, home of Mark ...)

    2001
  • The Newscasters

    (Network and local news were once considered by its purvey...)

    1977
  • Face Value 1979
  • Supertube: The Rise of Television Sports 1984
  • White Town Drowsing: Journeys to Hannibal 1986
  • Flags of Our Fathers 2000
  • The Man Who Flew the Memphis Belle: Memoir of a WWII Bomber Pilot 2001

Interests

• Photography, cooking

• Politicians

  Lyndon Johnson

• Writers

  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Adrienne Rich, Wallace Stevens, Linda Pastan, W. B. Yeats, Joan Didion, Garry Wills, Wendell Berry

Connections

Ron Powers is married to Honoree Fleming. They had two sons together. In 2005 one of their sons died.

Spouse:

Honoree Fleming

Son:

Kevin Powers

Son:

Dean Powers

References

• Ron Powers on Facebook