He joined the Drake University faculty this year after 35 years as a newspaper reporter and editor. A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, he most recently was managing editor of The (Wilmington, Del.)News Journal and The Des Moines Register. For 11 years he was a reporter and assignment editor at The Washington Post, where he covered local and national politics, as well as Congress. He was part of a team of Post reporters covering the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections and political conventions. Earlier, he was a reporter and editor at The Kansas City Star, which won a Pulitzer Prize for staff coverage of the 1981 Hyatt Regency skywalk collapse that killed more than 100 people.

His wife, Barbara, is an attorney and former journalist. Their sons live in the Washington, D.C., area and a daughter lives in Houston, Texas.

When not writing or reading, he prefers to spend time fishing for bass and pike at a cabin in far northern Minnesota.