John M. Barry
New York Times best-selling author 

John M. Barry is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author whose books have won more than twenty awards. In 2005 the National Academies of Science named The Great Influenza, a study of the 1918 pandemic, the year’s outstanding book on science or medicine, and the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Pathogens gave Barry its 2005 “September Eleventh Award” for his contributions to pandemic preparedness. In 2006 the National Academies also invited him to give its annual Abel Wolman Distinguished Lecture; he is the only non-scientist ever to give that lecture. In 1998 Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, won the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians for the year’s best book of American history.

Barry is currently nearing completion of his next book, tentatively titled The Creation of the American Soul, which focuses on the development of the separation of church and state in the 17th century, as manifested in John Winthrop's "cittie upon a hill" and the concomitant enforced conformity in Massachusetts as opposed to the freedom of religion and individualism in Roger Williams's Rhode Island.

Barry serves on advisory boards at M.I.T’s Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and was the only non-scientist on a federal government Infectious Disease Board of Experts. He advised both the Bush and Obama administrations on influenza and he has also advised other federal, state, and World Health Organization officials on influenza, crisis management, and risk communication. After Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana Congressional delegation asked him to chair a bipartisan working group on flood control, and in 2007 he was appointed to both the Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Authority East, which oversees six levee districts in the metropolitan New Orleans area, and the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which develops and implements the hurricane protection plan for the state. The National Academies of Science has recognized his expertise in entirely different areas, inviting him to give not only the 2006 Wolman Lecture on water resources, but also the keynote speech at its first international scientific meeting on influenza. Similarly, he has been keynote speaker at both a White House Conference on the Mississippi Delta and an International Congress on Respiratory Viruses; he has lectured at the National War College, Harvard Business School, and many similar venues. He is also co-originator of Riversphere, a $100 million center being developed by Tulane University which will be the first facility in the world dedicated to comprehensive river research.

His articles have appeared in such scientific journals as Nature and Journal of Infectious Disease as well as in lay publications ranging from Sports Illustrated to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fortune, Time, Newsweek, and Esquire. A frequent guest on every broadcast network in the US, he has appeared on such shows as NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's World News, and NPR's All Things Considered, as well as on such foreign media as the BBC and Al Jazeera. He has also served as a consultant for Sony Pictures and contributed to award-winning television documentaries.

His writing has received not only formal awards but less formal recognition as well. In 2004 GQ named Rising Tide one of nine pieces of writing essential to understanding America; that list also included Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” His first book, The Ambition and the Power: A true story of Washington, was cited by The New York Times as one of the eleven best books ever written about Washington and the Congress. His second book The Transformed Cell: Unlocking the Mysteries of Cancer, coauthored with Dr. Steven Rosenberg, was published in twelve languages. And a story about football he wrote was selected for inclusion in an anthology of the best football writing of all time published in 2006 by Sports Illustrated.

In addition to serving on advisory boards at Johns Hopkins and MIT, he is on the board of the Society of American Historians, American Heritage Rivers, and the advisory board for the National Mississippi River Museum in Dubuque. Before becoming a writer, Barry coached football at the high school, small college, and major college levels. Currently Distinguished Scholar at the Center for Bioenvironmental Research of Tulane and Xavier Universities, he lives in New Orleans.