Stephen Hess

Stephen Hess, one of the foremost authorities on media and government in the United States, is a senior fellow emeritus in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. He first joined Brookings in 1972 and was distinguished research professor of media and public affairs at the George Washington University (2004-2009). Served on White House staff during Eisenhower and Nixon presidencies and as advisor to Presidents Ford and Carter.

Hess is the author of numerous books including The Professor and the President: Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Nixon White House, American Political Cartoons: From 1754 to 2010; Bit Player: My Life with Presidents and Ideas, and
America's Political Dynasties: From Adams to Clinton.

Articles by this Author

An American In Paris, February 1967 | Vol. 18, No. 2

Faced with war, famine, and bloody revolution, a political wheel horse turned into a first-class ambassador.

Big Bill Taft, October 1966 | Vol. 17, No. 6

The only American ever to be both President and Chief Justice of this country was jolly, energetic, and weighed over three hundred pounds.

The Long, Long Trail, August 1966 | Vol. 17, No. 5

The members of Huey’s Louisiana clan who tried to follow his footsteps to the land of their dreams never quite matched his bumptious stride or dictatorial power—but they grew into a thriving political dynasty

Featured Authors

Acheson, Dean

Dean Acheson (1893-1971) was an attorney and statesman who served as Secretary of State from 1949 to 1953 under President Harry Truman. A key architect of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, Acheson stressed the importance of multilateral organizations in the fight against totalitarianism. Prior to his service in the Truman Administration, Acheson clerked for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, worked at Washington law firm Covington & Burling, and served as Undersecretary of the Treasury for one year under President Franklin Roosevelt.

Ambrose, Stephen E.

Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) was a historian and professor who wrote on military history, presidential history, and American expansion and foreign policy. Ambrose has been praised for his biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, and for helping to galvanize interest in World War II.

Becker, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Becker is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books. Her history When The War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge won accolades from the Robert F. Kennedy book award, while her recent biography of female conflict journalists You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War won the 2022 Sperber Book Prize and Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize. She is also the author of America’s Vietnam War: A Narrative History for young adults.

Bird, Kai

Kai Bird is a historian and Executive Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is best known for writing about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, US-Middle East relations and biographies of political figures. Bird is the author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Blight, David W.

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. Recently, Blight has written A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize.