Greg Mitchell | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1947 (age 76–77) Upstate New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Author, journalist |
| Genre | Politics, history, journalism |
Greg Mitchell (born 1947) is an American author and journalist. He has written twelve non-fiction books on United States politics and history of the 20th and 21st centuries. He has also written and directed three film documentaries.
The feature Atomic Cover-up (2021) screened at over fifteen film festivals and won multiple awards including the top film/TV award from the Organization of American Historians in 2024. The First Attack Ads: Hollywood vs. Upton Sinclair aired over hundreds of PBS stations in October 2022 and The Memorial Day Massacre did the same in 2023. Each earned an Emmy Award nomination. His latest book, published by the New Press in 2020, was the award-winning The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood — and America — Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. His previous book, a bestseller, was published by Crown in October 2016 (and in ten editions abroad), was The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill. From 2009 to 2016 he blogged on the media and politics for The Nation, where he closely covered WikiLeaks.[1] He co-produced the acclaimed 2014 film documentary Following the Ninth, about the political and cultural influence of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
In three recent books, he has addressed issues of the relations between the press and government, especially related to the conduct of the 21st-century United States wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His book, The Campaign of the Century (1992), about Upton Sinclair's run for governor of California and the rise of media politics, received the 1993 Goldsmith Book Prize for journalism. It was adapted by PBS as a documentary episode for its seven-part series on The Great Depression (1993). In addition, it was adapted as a vaudeville-style musical and received an award in California in 2006 for musical theatre.[citation needed]
Mitchell was editor of Nuclear Times magazine (1982 to 1986), and became interested in the history of the United States' use of the atom bomb during World War II. He addressed issues related to this in a 1996 book co-written with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America, and a later book, Atomic Cover-up.