Ted Gup

Ted Gup is a legendary investigative reporter who worked under Bob Woodward at the Washington Post, and later at Time. His latest book is Nation of Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and the American Way of Life.

Earlier this month I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

I tend to revisit my favorite authors and though I am associated with investigative reporting, my favorite reading is far from sleuthing. I return again and again to E. B. White, the poets Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, John Donne ( which makes me a formalist) and numerous essayists -- Ruskin, J.S. Mill, Walter Lippmann, Thoreau, Emerson, Joyce Carol Oates, Bertrand Russell -- as well as naturalists like Barry Lopez, David Quammen, etc. I rarely if ever read contemporary fiction -- not because I wouldn't enjoy it, but because I can never seem to get sufficient traction with what has already been written and withstood the "test of time," if you'll pardon the cliche. I also read collections of columnists and I enjoy dipping into history books and reading random chapters. I know this is eclectic (to be charitable) but that's the sort of thing I most enjoy reading.

Ted Gup is the Shirley Wormser Professor of Journalism at Case Western Reserve University. He has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist and has received the George Polk Award, the Worth Bingham Prize, the Gerald Loeb Award, the Book-of-the-Year Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors, and many other awards. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, a MacArthur Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow.

Nation of Secrets won the 2008 Goldsmith Book Prize.

Visit Ted Gup's website.

--Marshal Zeringue