He earned his B.A. from Ohio State University in 1982 and his Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1989. He has taught at Princeton University, U.S. Naval Academy, and Hofstra University, and he has earned several honorary doctorates for his contributions to American letters.[3]
The late historian Stephen E. Ambrose once called Brinkley "the best of the new generation of American historians".[4] Together they wrote three books: The Rise to Globalism (1998); Witness to History (1999); and The Mississippi: and the Making of A Nation (2002).[5]
The Chicago Tribune has called Dr. Brinkley "America's new past master", while former President Bill Clinton called him "one of the historians I most admire".[6]
Five of his award-winning books have been selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year.
Brinkley's comprehensive American Heritage History of the United States won the prestigious Benjamin Franklin Award.
His epic Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress won Business Week book of the year while Driven Patriot (biography of James Forrestal) received the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Naval History Prize.
Brinkley had the honor of being selected the official biographer of Rosa Parks. Meanwhile, his The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House is widely considered instrumental in the ex-president winning the Nobel Peace prize.[7]
During the early 1990s, Brinkley taught American Arts and Politics out of Hofstra University aboard the Majic Bus, a roving, transcontinental classroom, from which emerged the book, The Majic Bus: an American Odyssey, published in 1993. In 1993, he left Hofstra University to teach at the University of New Orleans and taught this class again, using a natural-gas bus. He also worked with Stephen Ambrose, then Director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans. Ambrose chose Brinkley to become Director of the Eisenhower Center for five years before going to Tulane.
Brinkley is the literary executor for his friend, the journalist Hunter S. Thompson. He is also the editor of a three-volume collection of Thompson's letters:
• Volume 1: The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967. Published April 7, 1998.
• Volume 2: Fear And Loathing In America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist. Published December 13, 2000.
• Volume 3: The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop, 1977-2005. Schedule delayed until February, 2009.
Brinkley is also the authorized biographer for Beat generation author Jack Kerouac, having edited Kerouac's diaries as Windblown World. He has also written profiles of Kurt Vonnegut,[8] Norman Mailer, and Ken Kesey for Rolling Stone Magazine.
In January 2004, Brinkley released Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, about U.S. Senator John Kerry's military service and anti-war activism during the Vietnam War.
In January 2006, Brinkley and fellow historian Julie M. Fenster released Parish Priest, a biography of Father Michael J. McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus.
In May 2006, Brinkley released The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, a record of the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast. The book won the 2007 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He also appeared in Spike Lee's documentary about Hurricane Katrina, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.
Brinkley edited the New York Times best-selling The Reagan Diaries. He is also the author of The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day, and the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion (2005)
Selected publications
• Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal (1992) With Townsend Hoopes
• Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, 1953-71 (1992)
• The Majic Bus: An American Odyssey (1993)
• The proud highway: saga of a desperate southern gentleman, 1955-1967 (1997) ed.
• Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 (1997)
• FDR and the creation of the U.N. (1997) With Townsend Hoopes
• American Heritage History (1998)
• Jimmy Carter: The Unfinished Presidency (1999)
• Witness to America (1999) With Stephen Ambrose
• Fear and loathing in America: the brutal odyssey of an outlaw journalist, 1968-1976 (2000)
• Rosa Parks (2000)
• The Mississippi: and the Making of a Nation (2002) With Stephen Ambrose
• Wheels for the world : Henry Ford, his company, and a century of progress, 1903-2003 (2003)
• Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War (2004)
• Voices of Valor : D-Day, June 6, 1944 (2004) With Ronald J. Dretz
• The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc (2005)
• Windblown world: the journals of Jack Kerouac, 1947-1954 (2004) ed.
• The World War II Memorial: a grateful nation remembers (2004)
• The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day, and the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion (2005)
• Parish Priest: Father Michael McGivney and American Catholicism (2006) With Julie M. Fenster
• The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2006)
• The Reagan Diaries (2007) ed.
• Road novels 1957-1960 (2007) ed.
• Gerald R. Ford (2007)