Biography

Color portrait of Edwin Black. Edwin Black is the award-winning, New York Times and international bestselling investigative author of 56 bestselling editions in 14 languages in 61 countries, as well as scores of newspaper and magazine articles in the leading publications of the United States, Europe and Israel. With a million books in print, his work focuses on genocide and hate, corporate criminality and corruption, governmental misconduct, academic fraud, philanthropy abuse, oil addiction, alternative energy and historical investigation. Editors have submitted Black's work nine times for Pulitzer Prize nomination, and in recent years he has been the recipient of a series of top editorial awards. He has also contributed to a number of anthologies worldwide. For his work, Black has been interviewed on hundreds of network broadcasts from Oprah, the Today Show, CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports and NBC Dateline in the US to the leading networks of Europe and Latin American. His works have been the subject of numerous documentaries, here and abroad. All of his books have been optioned by Hollywood for film, with three in active production. Black's speaking tours include hundreds of events in dozens of cities each year, appearing at prestigious venues from the Library of Congress in Washington to the Simon Wiesenthal Institute in Los Angeles in America, and in Europe from London's British War Museum and Amsterdam's Institute for War Documentation to Munich's Carl Orff Hall. Black is scheduled to soon begin his weekly network Sunday morning issues, "The Cutting Edge" on a new, soon to be launched, national network, accompanied by his weekly syndicated column of the same name. He is the editor of The Cutting Edge News, which receives more than 450,000 visits each month.

Black's six award-winning bestselling books are IBM and the Holocaust (Crown Publishing and others worldwide 2001), The Transfer Agreement (Macmillan 1984 and Carroll-Graff 2001), War Against the Weak (Four Walls Eight Windows and others worldwide September 2003), Banking on Baghdad (John Wiley & Sons and others worldwide 2004), Internal Combustion (St. Martins Press and others worldwide 2006) and a novel, Format C: (Dialog Press and others worldwide 1999). His enterprise and investigative writings have appeared in scores of newspapers from the Washington Post , Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune to the Sunday Times of London , Frankfurter Zeitung and the Jerusalem Post, as well as scores of magazines as diverse as Playboy, Sports Illustrated , Reform Judaism, Der Spiegel, L'Express, BusinessWeek and American Bar Association Journal. Black's articles are syndicated worldwide by Los Angeles Times Syndicate International, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post Syndicate, JTA and Feature Group News Service.

In 2007, Black won four major editorial awards for Internal Combustion: Best Nonfiction book of the Year from the American Society of Journalists and Authors; the coveted Rockower First Prize Award for Best Investigative Article of the Year from the American Jewish Press Association for "GM and the Nazis" which was drawn from a chapter of the book and expanded into a four-part syndicated series; the "Green Globe" for best book on the environment, and the Thomas Edison Award for best book of the year on the topic of getting off oil. In addition, editors at St. Martin Press nominated the book for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.

In 2005, Black won the World Affairs Council's award for the Best World Affairs Book for Banking on Baghdad , and the Doña Gracia Medal for Best Book of The Year. In 2004, he won the coveted Rockower First Prize Award for Investigative Journalism from the American Jewish Press Association for "Funding Hate," his acclaimed, syndicated investigation of the Ford Foundation's systematic funding of hate groups. In 2003, he received the top two editorial awards from the American Society of Journalists and Authors: Best Book of the Year for IBM and the Holocaust and Best Article of the Year for "IBM in Auschwitz" in the Village Voice. Also in 2003, Black received the International Human Rights Award from the World Affairs Council for War Against the Weak.

Editors have submitted Black's work for Pulitzer Prize nomination nine times, most recently for Internal Combustion, and three times for the National Book Award. In addition, Black received the Carl Sandburg Award for The Transfer Agreement as well as two Folio Awards and a Computer Press Association Award for excellence in magazine publishing.

NEWSWEEK: Backed by exhaustive research, Black's case is simple and stunning: that IBM facilitated the identification and roundup of millions of Jews during the 12 years of the Third Reich. ... Black's evidence may be the most damning to appear yet against a purported corporate accomplice.

Edwin Black is probably best known for IBM and the Holocaust, an international bestseller, published in 2001, documenting the previously unknown twelve-year strategic relationship between IBM and Hitler's Third Reich. IBM developed custom-made data processing programs, using punch cards, to organize and accelerate all six phases of the Holocaust, from identification, expulsion and confiscation to ghettoization, deportation and extermination. IBM and the Holocaust was simultaneously released in 40 countries in nine languages on February 11, 2001 to international acclaim and worldwide headlines. It immediately became a bestseller on the New York Times list as well as those in many other nations such as Canada, Germany, Italy, and Brazil. The work is now available in 61 countries in 14 languages and 27 editions, and it has been optioned for film. Black has lectured and toured on the topic, from the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles to the Royal War Museum in London to the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. The author's writing on the subject has appeared in publications from the Los Angeles Times to Der Spiegel to the Jerusalem Post. His interviews for the book have included scores of network TV and radio shows from NBC's Today Show, Dateline, and NPR to England's BBC, Germany's ZDF, and France's TF-1. In May 2003, IBM and the Holocaust received the American Society of Journalists and Authors top two awards: best nonfiction book of the year; plus an excerpt with additional information about IBM in Auschwitz appearing in the Village Voice received the award as the best newspaper investigative article of the year. Crown Publishing also submitted the book for a Pulitzer Prize nomination. More information on the book can be found at www.ibmandtheholocaust.com

Publisher's Weekly: Black spins the history of oil's ascendancy to dominance over the global energy market into a sordid tale of conspiracy, deception and murder. This enthralling book... well-researched... manages to keep this complex history compelling... with devastating clarity.

Internal Combustion, published in 2006, connects the dots of greed and deception that have governed energy from ancient times to the present, and that threaten to destroy our future. Based on prodigious research deep into the historical record and previously unavailable archives, Black pulls no punches. He demonstrates exactly how power-hungry despots, avaricious monopolists, and bottom-line obsessed corporate oligarchs have long controlled where we get our energy and how we use it. From the electric cars of a century ago, to the secret 1914 project of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison to convert America to electric vehicles, Internal Combustion shocks and reveals. Known for revealing "a century of lies," the book lays bare the story behind the energy crisis--past, present, and future. Yet, the book sounds a call to action, telling people how they can get off of oil right now. The world can peer into the past and discover that to achieve clean energy independence and petropolitical security we do not need to reinvent the wheel. We need only to exhume the wheel of alternative energy from whence it was deliberately buried by those who have profited from petroleum and Internal Combustion. St Martins Press has submitted Internal Combustion for a Pulitzer Prize nomination. More information on the book can be found at www.internalcombustionbook.com

WASHINGTON POST: Edwin Black's impressive analysis, which included looking at more than 50,000 original documents...provides a comprehensive history of Iraq that explains why the West's record in the region so complicates nation-building there today.

Banking on Baghdad, published in October 2004, chronicles the tragic and turbulent 7,000-year history of Iraq. Banking on Baghdad is the first history of Iraq from a global stage, as determined by the corporate boardrooms and governmental war rooms of London, Paris, Istanbul, Washington and the other centers of commercial and political power that coveted its geography and geology. Black led a team of thirty researchers in five countries, accessing more than 100 repositories and securing some 50,000 documents. The author was granted special access to the corporate archives of numerous oil companies involved in Iraq and the Middle East. Banking on Baghdad immediately hit the Barnes & Noble bestseller list for International Fairs and was the basis for a 50-city tour. The volume lauded by Miami Herald as one of the year's Ten Best, won the World Affairs Council for Best World Affairs Book of 2004 and was submitted by Wiley Books for a Pulitzer nomination. More information on the book can be found at www.bankingonbaghdad.com

ESQUIRE: Edwin Black is a dangerous man. He tells us things we don't want to hear, like, for instance, this: "The scientific rationales that drove killer doctors at Auschwitz were first concocted on Long Island." His groundbreaking War Against the Weak, Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race... is a scary and necessary book.

War Against the Weak, published in 2003, assembles the gripping story of America's decades-long campaign to create a white, Nordic master race through a sham science called eugenics. Some 60,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized in eugenic campaigns organized by American corporate philanthropic organizations such as the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation. The program was then transplanted to Germany where the Rockefeller Foundation and American eugenicists founded and funded Nazi eugenics. To assemble War Against the Weak , Black headed a team of some 50 researchers, working in dozens of archives in four countries, and accumulating some 50,000 documents. Hailed as a "gripping account" by historian Paul Weindling and "astonishing" by Abraham Foxman, War Against the Weak launched September 7, 2003. The New York Times called the book "chilling," Esquire called it "scary and necessary," and Library Journal dubbed it a "bombshell." War Against the Weak received the World Affairs Council's award for Best Book of 2003 for International Human Affairs. More information on the book can be found at www.waragainsttheweak.com

JERUSALEM POST: Black has authored an exhaustive, compelling, well-written and edited work. It is historical journalism at its best.

The Transfer Agreement, Edwin Black's first book, was originally published in 1984 and has been continuously republished in updated editions. It documents the dramatic story of the pact between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine in which the Zionist Organization agreed to break the worldwide, Jewish-led anti-Nazi boycott in exchange for the transfer of some 60,000 Jews to Palestine along with millions in their assets converted into German merchandise. The Transfer Agreement, operating from 1933 to 1939, helped seed the Jewish State. In April 1998, Spertus Institute honored Black at a special ceremony in Chicago for donating the 35,000 archival documents gathered in the original research. Republished continuously, the latest edition was released in 2001 by Carroll & Graf with a special introduction by Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Black has written about the Transfer Agreement for a diverse group of publications, from the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune to Reform Judaism and B'nai B'rith Monthly. He has lectured on the topic extensively around the United States. He was interviewed on numerous television shows such as the CBS Morning News and was the subject of a half-hour NBC documentary. The Transfer Agreement won the Carl Sandburg Award for the best nonfiction book of 1984 and Macmillan submitted it for a Pulitzer nomination; it has been recently optioned for film. More information on the book can be found at www.transferagreement.com

KIRKUS REVIEWS: Massively conceived, neatly chiseled.... Black throughout shows great smarts and at times displays virtuoso rhetoric.

Edwin Black's first novel, Format C:, a kabalistic, technological thriller with echoes from the Holocaust, was met with critical acclaim. The Cleveland Plain Dealer called Format C: a "gripping, fanciful, fast-paced tale." Kirkus Reviews wrote: "Massively conceived, neatly chiseled... Black throughout shows great smarts and at times displays virtuoso rhetoric." Bookbrowser called the novel "a brilliant allegorical thriller". In 1999, the author toured twenty cities and lectured to groups and appeared on media throughout as the millennium approached. More information on the book can be found at www.formatnovel.com

Edwin Black began his career as an aggressive enterprise and investigative reporter and editor in the competitive Chicago journalism scene of the late seventies and early eighties. He was editor of the award-winning investigative magazine Chicago Monthly and wrote extensively for all four daily newspapers of the day: Chicago Tribune, Chicago Today , Chicago Daily News and Chicago Sun-Times, as well as the weekly Chicago Reader and Chicago Magazine. Nationally, he wrote for leading magazines and newspapers, such as the Washington Post , Playboy, Journal of the American Bar Association, and Sports Illustrated. An avid movie music reviewer, he has written on soundtracks and music for Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader , Downbeat, International Musician, and many other publications in America and Europe; he has interviewed such leading composers as Dimitri Shostakovich, Aaron Copland, Jerry Goldsmith and Hans Zimmer.

In 1984, Black began "The Cutting Edge," a weekly enterprise column syndicated to newspapers in 50 cities, first from Chicago and Washington D.C. and then as a foreign correspondent in Jerusalem. "The Cutting Edge" was nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes. His hard-hitting enterprise articles include exclusive interviews with Minister Louis Farrakhan, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and Chicago Mayor Harold Washington. The column was noted for breaking stories on the Skinheads, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Hebrews, and Israeli religious strife. Black was the only non-Israeli print journalist to accompany Shimon Peres to his surprise February 1987 summit in Cairo. For the column, Black also accompanied the South Lebanese Army on patrol in Lebanon, and the Jerusalem Bomb Squad during an outbreak of terror bombings.

As an investigative journalist, Black has investigated the Ford Foundation systematically funding hate groups, corrupt insurance companies, the homeless, the Jonathan Pollard spy scandal, corporate misconduct, Microsoft antitrust activities, hate crimes, the infamous Kathy Webb rape case, and the abduction of journalist Terry Anderson. His exclusive investigation of the worldwide Bramson insurance empire led to numerous arrests and convictions as a direct result of his disclosures. His investigation of Minnesota's powerful Senator David Durenberger ultimately led to his indictment. Black has often worked undercover. His internationally syndicated investigation of the Ford Foundation financing of Mideast agitation groups, called "Funding Hate," resulted in Congressional investigations and a sea change in American private donations to Palestinian groups. He was the first to investigate and document improprieties and anti-Semitic conduct by the FBI counterintelligence chief David Szady in targeting Jewish individuals and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. His undercover investigation of the Cocos Island slave state propelled the last slave state to the world's attention and its subsequent dismantling by the United Nations.

For his articles and books, Black has appeared on hundreds of TV and radio shows worldwide, including Oprah, the Today Show, Wolf Blitzer, NPR's Weekend Edition, America's Most Wanted and the leading shows of England, Canada, Europe and Latin America. For his books, he has appeared in numerous documentaries, including The Corporation and King of Capitalism.

Edwin Black is represented worldwide by Lynne Rabinoff Associates and B'nai B'rith Lecture Bureau.

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Awards

  1. World Affairs Council Award-Great Lakes for Best World Affairs Book of 2004 for Banking on Baghdad.
  2. The International Society for Sephardic Progress's Doña Gracia Medal for Best Book of 2004 for Banking on Baghdad.
  3. American Jewish Press Association 2003 Rockower Award for best investigative article of the year, for the series "Funding Hate," syndicated internationally by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
  4. World Affairs Council-Great Lakes, award for Best Book of 2003 for International Affairs for War Against the Weak.
  5. American Society of Journalists and Authors, 2003, best nonfiction investigative book of the year for the paperback edition of IBM and the Holocaust.
  6. American Society of Journalists and Authors, 2003, best article of investigative journalism on IBM at Auschwitz, entitled "Final Solutions," in the Village Voice.
  7. AOFAS Roger Mann Award, 1996, honorable mention for best article on healthcare.
  8. Folio Award, 1995 for publishing excellence.
  9. Folio Award, 1995, for an undercover story on the homeless.
  10. Computer Press Association, 1994, best new computer magazine.
  11. Rockower Award, 1988, excellence in Jewish commentary for a turning point commentary on the Jonathan Pollard Affair.
  12. Smolar Award, 1987, excellence in public affairs journalism for an article on Jews and Hispanics in B'nai B'rith Monthly and the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine and then syndicated via the "Cutting Edge."
  13. Carl Sandburg Award, 1984, best nonfiction book, The Transfer Agreement.
  14. Eagle Award, 1978, excellence in editing.
  15. The Chicago Award, 1978, best feature article in the Chicago Reader for exclusive interview with Jewish attorney representing Nazis seeking to March through Skokie.
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Past Nominations and Award Submissions

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February 2008


Copyright © 2001—2007 Edwin Black
All Rights Reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be used in any form or by any means - graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems - without the written permission of the publisher.