Thomas Oliphant

Thomas Oliphant is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and Washington columnist for The Boston Globe. He is the author of four books, including The Road to Camelot.

Al Franken says “Oliphant brings more to the table than anyone I know.” Madeline Albright called him “the Will Rogers of our times.” Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote that his book Praying for Gil Hodges was a “small masterpiece.”

Oliphant has been a frequent guest on television news programs, including "Nightline" on ABC-TV, "The NewsHour" with Jim Lehrer on PBS, "Face The Nation," the "Today" show, "Good Morning America" and "CBS This Morning." Oliphant was also a regular guest on "The Al Franken Show."

In 1968 Oliphant joined the Boston Globe. During his career with the newspaper, he served as its Washington correspondent and reported on 10 Presidential campaigns. He was one of three editors who managed The Globe's coverage of school desegregation in Boston, work which won a 1975 Pulitzer Prize. He also received a writing award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

In March 2005, Oliphant suffered a brain aneurysm. His account of the experience and his recovery appeared in The Globe on June 5, 2005. At the end of 2005, he was one of 32 Globe staff members who accepted a retirement buyout package from the New York Times Company, owner of The Globe.

Oliphant was born in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated in 1967 from Harvard University. He is married to CBS reporter Susan Spencer.

Articles by this Author

Ellsberg's “Magic Potion” to Stop the War, Summer 2021 | Vol. 65, No. 5

As a young reporter for the Boston Globe, I stumbled onto the existence of The Pentagon Papers.

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.

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.

Brinkley, Douglas

Douglas Brinkley, a distinguished professor of history at Rice University and Contributing Editor of American Heritage, has written more than 20 books, most recently The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (Harper 2009) and The Reagan Diaries (HarperCollins 2007). Brinkley earned his B.A from Ohio State University University in 1982, and his Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1989.