James Hargreaves

I was born in Glasgow, Scotland, but moved to the States in 1987. I am now a U.S. citizen. My father was in textiles, so we travelled quite a bit when I was young. I spent many years in Germany and India. I went to the University of St. Andrews but, rather stupidly, did not ever play golf there.

As a young man my dream, for some inexplicable reason, had always been to become a newspaper man in Australia. So, upon graduation, I headed to Australia in pursuit of said dream. It became rather quickly apparent that some sort of qualifications were needed. Yes, even for Australian journalism.

So I came to the States to study journalism at the University of Georgia. There I met my beloved mentor, Conrad Fink. He taught me how to write clean and hard. He killed my purple passages and made me a better writer for it. We lost Conrad last year.

After Athens I began a long career in newspapers that took me to Georgia, Florida, South Dakota, and Pennsylvania.

This book marries my love of journalism, America, travel, and politics. It took me three years to write.