James Reston Jr.—novelist, nonfiction writer, and playwright—has published eighteen books and written for publications such as the New York Times, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, National Geographic, and Esquire, has been a fellow at the American Academy in Rome, a fellow at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, and a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. His most recent book is A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam Memorial (Arcade Publishing, 2017).