Jazz: A History of America's Music

Geoffrey C. Ward is an author, historian, and screenwriter. He has written for numerous documentary films, and has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Francis Parkman Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Geoffrey Champion Ward was born in 1940 in Newark, Ohio. He was a graduate of Oberlin College in 1962. He is an editor, show more author, historian and writer of scripts for American history documentaries for public television. He is the author or co-author of 18 books, including five companion books to the documentaries he has written. He is the winner of seven Emmy Awards. He was the founding editor of Audience Magazine (1970-1973) and the editor of American Heritage Magazine (1977-1982). His 1989 biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, A First-class Temperament: the Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The principal writer of the television mini-series The Civil War, Ward has collaborated with its co-producer Ken Burns on most of the documentaries he has made since, including Jazz, Baseball, The War and Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. This work has earned him five Emmy Awards. He also won two Emmys for the American Experience series, including The Kennedys, in 1992 and TR,The Story of Theodore Roosevelt in 1996. His script for the documentary Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, won the Writers Guild of America Award in 2005 and the accompanying book won the 2006 William Hill Sports Book of the Year and the Anisfield-Wolf Award for best biography. His works include The War: An Intimate History, Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz can Change Your Life and Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. His title The Roosevelts: An Intimate History made The New York Times Best Seller List in 2014. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Ken Burns, July 29, 1953 - Ken Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 29, 1953. Burns attended the alternative campus of Hampshire College in Amherst Massachusetts, graduating with a degree in film making. After graduating from college, Burns began Florentine Films with a few of his friends, and began creating his first documentary, entitled show more "The Brooklyn Bridge." This film won an Academy Award in 1982. His most famous work is his "Civil War" series, which has won many various awards. Burns was the first film maker to be inducted into the Society of American Historians, an unprecedented honor. (Bowker Author Biography) show less