Best known as a journalist and political commentator, Johnson is the author or editor of sixteen books, including The Landing: A Novel of Washington and World War II, co-written with Howard Simons (1986). His nonfiction books include The Bay of Pigs: The Leaders’ Story of Brigade 2506 (1964), In the Absence of Power: Governing America (1980), Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years (1991), and The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years (2001).
Johnson served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and worked his way up from a copy boy to a national affairs columnist for the Wilmington News-Journal, the Washington Evening Star, and The Washington Post. In addition, he was a regular commentator for the television shows Washington Week in Review and The News Hour, and taught journalism at several universities, including Duke, Princeton, George Washington University, and the University of Maryland.
Johnson is renowned for his coverage of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement in Selma, Alabama, and presidential elections. He won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1966, and was inducted into the Society of Professional Journalists’ DC chapter’s Hall of Fame in 2013.
