Karl E. Meyer
Biography
Karl E. Meyer is an author, foreign correspondent and a longtime editorial writer for the New York Times and Washington Post. He is currently editor emeritus of the quarterly World Policy Journal.
Born in Madison, Wisconsin, he is a graduate (history) of the University of Wisconsin (Madison) where he edited both the Daily Cardinal and the Athenaean literary magazine. He holds a Master of Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University as well as a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton.
From 1956-1971, he was first a reporter, then a member of the Editorial Board of the Washington Post; in 1965-70, he was the Post’s London Bureau Chief and 1970-71 he headed its New York Bureau. He joined the New York Times Editorial Board in 1979 where he served until 1998 as the senior writer on foreign affairs and a contributor to the Arts and Ideas section.
After his retirement from the Times, Meyer became Editor of the World Policy Journal, published quarterly at the New School University, a position he held until 2008.
He has also been a Washington correspondent of The New Statesman of London (1962-65); television columnist and contributing editor of The Saturday Review (1975-79), and a contributing editor of Archaeology (1999-2005).
He has been a visiting professor at Yale University, Tuft University’s Fletcher School, Bard College, and the McGraw Professor of Writing at Princeton. He has been a Reuter Fellow at Oxford University, a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute of Advanced Studies, Berlin), and a fellow of Davenport College, Yale. In 2012, he spent a term as a Senior Associate Member of St. Antony's College, Oxford. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Century Association.
Resident of New York City and Weston, Ct.
Books by Karl E. Meyer
The China Collectors: America's Century-Long Hunt for Asian Art Treasures (with Shareen Blair Brysac) Palgrave/Macmillan, 2015.
Pax Ethnica:Where and How Diversity Succeeds (with Shareen Blair Brysac) Public Affairs, 2012.
Kingmakers: the Invention of the Modern Middle East (with Shareen Blair Brysac), WW Norton, June 2008.
The Dust of Empire, PublicAffairs/Century Foundation, 2002; 2003 in UK by Little, Brown; reissued in paperback; NY Times Notable Book, Best Book of the Year, LA Times and finalist for the Gelber Prize. Several foreign publications Including UK by Little, Brown.
Tournament of Shadows: The Race for Empire in Central Asia (with Shareen Blair Brysac), Counterpoint, 1999, paperbound 2000 republished with new introduction by Basic Books in 2006)Finalist, Gelber Prize; NY Times Notable Book. Published in UK by Little, Brown. Selection of History Book Club. Spanish edition 2008.
Pundits, Poets and Wits: An Omnibus of American Newspaper Columns, Oxford University Press, 1990; reissued in paperback.
The Art Museum: Power, Money, Ethics, Morrow, 1978. Twentieth Century Fund study. Reissued in paperback.
Teotihuacan, Newsweek Books, 1975. Translated into Italian and Spanish.
The Plundered Past, Atheneum, 1973. Serialized in the New Yorker. Reissued in paperback, translated into six languages; Book-of-the-Month Club alternate; published in UK by Hamish Hamilton. Subject of ABC News documentary with Peter Jennings.
The Pleasures of Archaeology, Atheneum, 1970. Featured alternate, Book-of-the-Month Club Published in UK by Andre Deutsch.
Fulbright of Arkansas: The Public Positions of a Private Thinker, Robert Luce: McKay, Washington D.C., 1963. Preface by Walter Lippmann; reissued in paperback.
The Cuban Invasion (with Tad Szulc), Praeger, 1962. Ballantine paperback.
The New America, Basic Books, 1961. Main selection, Readers Subscription.