Ted Gup says, "I am a husband, a father of two
sons, a teacher, a poor guitarist, an able fly-fisherman, a decent pool player,
a failed poet, a long-in-the-tooth journalist and an aspiring writer who, three
books later, is still utterly mystified by the entire undertaking of
authorship."
Despite being mystified by the undertaking of authorship, Ted Gup has managed to write not only A Secret Gift (The Penguin Press, November 2010), but also two previous books: Nation of Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and the American Way of Life, winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and the bestselling The Book of Honor: Covert Lives And Classified Deaths at the CIA. He is a former investigative reporter for the Washington Post, where he worked under Bob Woodward. He later wrote for Time magazine, covering Congress and the environment, and served as Washington investigative correspondent. Since 2009, he has been professor and chair of the journalism department at Emerson College in Boston.
On your nightstand now:
Where I've been, and Where I'm Going by Joyce Carol Oates; Contemporary American Poetry edited Donald Hall--not so contemporary. It's a 1972 edition. I have a lot of catching up to do. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde; Boston Common: Scenes From Four Centuries by M. A. DeWolfe Howe; Fathers: A Collection of Poems edited by David Ray and Judy Ray (a gift from my friend and poet, Len Roberts). Usually I have a copy of Phillip Larkin's poems bedside but, alas, my copy migrated with me to the restroom.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Grimm's Fairy Tales (and any of the Golden Book Series on various explorers, adventurers, and warriors).
Your top five authors:
George Orwell, E.B. White, Walter Lippmann, Thomas Lynch, Anne Fadiman.
Book you've faked reading:
The Blue and Brown Books by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Ancient Rome: History of a Civilization that Ruled the World by Anna Maria Liberati. I'm a sucker for anything having to do with ancient Rome and Greece--I am an unrepentant classics major.
Book that changed your life:
Hiroshima by John Hersey.
Favorite line from a book:
From the poet Tom Gunn, "One is always nearer by not keeping still."
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Any book by E.B.White.