John A. Farrell is the bestselling author of Richard Nixon: The Life, which won the PEN America award for the best biography and the New-York Historical Society book prize for the best volume of American history in 2017. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book, Ted Kennedy: A Life, made the list of finalists for the National Book Award. Farrell has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia and began his literary career as a newspaperman, most notably for the Denver Post and the Boston Globe, where he served as White House correspondent and was part of the vaunted Spotlight team. In 2001, he published Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century, a biography of the late Speaker of the House, which won the D.B. Hardeman prize for the best book on Congress. Farrell's biography of the great American defense lawyer, Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, won the 2012 Los Angeles Times book award for the best biography of the year. He has also earned a George Polk award for investigative reporting and the Gerald Ford prize and White House Correspondents’ Association honors for coverage of the presidency.