The Joy of Books

Eric Burns is a uniquely varied man of letters. His first play won the Eudora Welty Emerging Playwrights Completion. As an NBC News correspondent, in addition to being an Emmy winner, he was named one of the best writers in the history of television news. And as an author, he has twice won the American Library Association's "Best of the Best" award (for The Spirits of American: A Social History of Alcohol in 2004, and The Smoke of the Gods: A Social History of Tobacco in 2007). He has also written 1920: The Year That Made the Decade Roar, chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best non-fiction books of 2015. He lives in Westport, Connecticut.