18 Facts About Rick Atkinson

Rick Atkinson has won Pulitzer Prizes in history and journalism.

In 2019, Atkinson was named a Vincent J Dooley Distinguished Fellow by the Georgia Historical Society, an honor that recognizes national leaders in the field of history as both writers and educators whose research has enhanced or changed the way the public understands the past.

Rick Atkinson was born in Munich to Margaret and Larry Rick Atkinson, who was a US Army officer.

Rick Atkinson received a master of arts degree in English language and literature from the University of Chicago in 1975.

Rick Atkinson contributed to the newspaper's coverage of the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse in Kansas City, Missouri, for which the paper's staff in 1982 was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for local spot news reporting.

In November 1983, Rick Atkinson was hired as a reporter on the national staff of The Washington Post.

Rick Atkinson wrote about defense issues, the 1984 presidential election.

Rick Atkinson returned from Europe in 1996 to become assistant managing editor for investigations; in that role, he headed a seven-member team that for more than a year scrutinized shootings by the District of Columbia police department, resulting in "Deadly Force," a series for which the Post was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

Rick Atkinson left the newspaper world in 1999 to write about World War II, an interest that began with his birth in Germany and was rekindled during his three-year tour in Berlin.

Rick Atkinson twice rejoined the Post, first in 2003 when for two months he accompanied General David Petraeus and the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion of Iraq, and again in 2007 when he made trips to Iraq and Afghanistan while writing "Left of Boom", an investigative series about roadside bombs in modern warfare, which won the Gerald R Ford Award for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense.

Rick Atkinson is a presidential counselor at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, a member of the Society of American Historians, and an inductee in the Academy of Achievement, for which he serves as a board member.

Rick Atkinson serves on the governing commission of the National Portrait Gallery.

Rick Atkinson is married to the former Jane Ann Chestnut of Lawrence, Kansas, a researcher and clinician at the National Institutes of Health.

In 1993, Rick Atkinson wrote Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War.

Rick Atkinson is a master of what might be called 'pointillism history,' assembling the small dots of pure color into a vivid, tumbling narrative.

Petraeus and the 101st Airborne, Rick Atkinson wrote In the Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat, which The New York Times Book Review called "intimate, vivid, and well-informed", and which Newsweek cited as one of the ten best books of 2004.

Rick Atkinson was the lead essayist in Where Valor Rests: Arlington National Cemetery, published by the National Geographic Society in 2007.

Rick Atkinson is the editor and introductory essayist for an anthology of work by the journalist and military historian Cornelius Ryan published by Library of America in May 2019.