Harold Evans (1928–2020)

Sir Harold Evans, is the author of The American Century (Knopf, 1998), 700 pages with 900 photographs. In 2004 he completed work on a history of 200 years of innovation entitled They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators. Little, Brown and Company, (a division of Hachette Book Group USA). This 500-page book was the basis of a four-part PBS series, produced by WGBH, makers of The American Experience. For the first installment in the series Evans was nominated with Carl Charlson for an award by the Writers’ Guild of America for “the outstanding script of 2004 in the category of documentary, other than current affairs.”

An innovative educational company, Contemporary Learning Systems, received a a grant from the Marion Kauffman Davis Foundation to prepare interactive college courses on innovation starting in 2009 based on They Made America . The pilot website is www.innovationcourse.org.

Evans was the President and Publisher of Random House Trade Group from 1990-1997. From 1997-1999 he was Editorial Director and Vice Chairman of U.S. News & World Report, the New York Daily News, The Atlantic Monthly and Fast Company, a position from which he resigned in January 2000 to devote himself full-time to major writing and television projects. (Evans remains a Contributing Editor at U.S. News & World Report). In 2002, The Freedom Forum invited Evans to be the guest curator of its Newseum exhibition “War Stories: Reporting in the Time of Conflict” and subsequently he wrote a monograph entitled War Stories: Reporting in the Time of Conflict From the Crimea to Iraq (Bunker Hill Publishing).

Before moving to the United States, Evans was the editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981, and editor of The Times from 1981 to 1982. His account of these years was published in his No. 1 UK best-seller Good Times, Bad Times. Evans ended his year at The Times shortly after being named Editor of the Year by Granada Television’s What the Papers Say. In his editing years, he wrote a five-volume manual entitled Editing and Design, which became the standard work for the training of journalists. Two volumes, Essential English and Pictures on a Page, were recently republished. In 1999, in the United States, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Center of Photography.

Evans graduated from Durham University in the U.K. in 1952 with honors in politics and economics, after service in the Royal Air Force. In 1956, he was awarded a Harkness Fellowship for two years of travel and study in the U.S. He did postgraduate work at the Universities of Chicago and Stanford for a Masters thesis on the reporting of foreign policy.

Evans was awarded a Doctorate in Civil Law by Durham University, and holds doctorates from the universities of London, Sterling and Teesside. In 2004, he was honored for services to journalism with a knighthood.

Sir Harold lives in New York City with his wife, Tina Brown, and their two children.