Rick Atkinson

America's greatest living chronicler of men at war, Rick Atkinson draws on an intimate knowledge of the soldier's life. The son of a career army officer, he was born in Germany and grew up on military posts. He developed his mastery of research -- along with his powerful prose style and keen eye for the telling detail -- as a reporter for The Kansas City Times and The Washington Post. In 1982, he was honored, along with the rest of the Kansas City newsroom team, with a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. The same year, he received an individual Pulitzer for national reporting. Among the articles cited by the prize jury were a series he wrote on the West Point class of 1966. Atkinson later elaborated this story in his bestselling book, The Long Gray Line. Since 1983, he has worked for The Washington Post, covering everything from election campaigns and the savings and loan scandal to the wars in Bosnia and Somalia. His reporting on the 1991 conflict with Iraq resulted in the book Crusad