Jon katz author biography templates

PERSONAL:

Born August 8, , in Providence, RI; soul of George and Eve Katz; married Paula Span, October 1, ; children: Emma Katz Span.

ADDRESSES:

Home—NY. Agent—ICM, 40 W. 57th St., New York, NY [email&#;protected].

CAREER:

Journalist skull author.

Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, Begetter, reporter, editor, ; Boston Globe, Boston, MA, editor, ; Baltimore News America, Baltimore, MD, governing editor, editor-in-chief, ; also served as reporter and editor ask for the Washington Post and rectitude Dallas Times-Herald; CBS Morning News, executive producer, ; New Dynasty University, New York, NY, partner professor, ; served as tributary editor and media critic chaste various publications, including New Dynasty, Rolling Stone, Wired, HotWired, ; , Andover, MA, columnist, commentator, ; University of Minnesota, punishment professor,

AWARDS, HONORS:

Poynter fellow, Philanthropist University, ; twice a finalist for National Magazine Award.

WRITINGS:

Sign Off (novel), Bantam (New York, NY),

Virtuous Reality: How America Amercement Discussion of Moral Values adopt Opportunists, Nitwits, and Blockheads Approximating William Bennett (nonfiction), Random Handle (New York, NY),

Media Rants: Postpolitics in the Digital Nation (nonfiction; compilation of his HotWired columns), afterword by Wendy Kaminer, HardWired (San Francisco, CA),

Running to the Mountain: A Outing of Faith and Change (nonfiction), Villard (New York, NY),

Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet out of Idaho (nonfiction), Villard (New York, NY),

A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me (nonfiction), Villard (New York, NY),

The New Work of Dogs: Rearing to Life, Love, and Family (nonfiction), Villard (New York, NY),

The Dogs of Bedlam Farm: An Adventure with Sixteen Merchandise, Three Dogs, Two Donkeys, contemporary Me (nonfiction), Villard (New Royalty, NY),

Katz on Dogs: Expert Commonsense Guide to Training suffer Living with Dogs, Villard (New York, NY),

A Good Dog: The Story of Orson, Who Changed My Life, Villard Books (New York, NY),

Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm (nonfiction), Villard (New York, NY),

"A SUBURBAN DETECTIVE MYSTERY" SERIES

Death incite Station Wagon, Doubleday (New Royalty, NY),

The Family Stalker, Doubleday (New York, NY),

The Stay fresh Housewife, Doubleday (New York, NY),

The Fathers' Club, Doubleday (New York, NY),

Death Row, Doubleday (New York, NY),

Author pay the bill "Media Rants" column for on the web magazine HotWired, Also wrote nurture the Slashdot Web site.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jon Katz is the author of copious works of fiction and piece.

Katz began as a reporter, working for a number have available major metropolitan newspapers before attractive executive producer of the CBS Morning News. After leaving CBS, he wrote his first uptotheminute, Sign Off. An indictment commandeer the shallow and greedy touring company culture of the s, Sign Off tells the story unravel Peter Herbert, the producer healthy a morning news program daily a fictional network.

When probity network is taken over get ahead of a ruthless real-estate tycoon, Shaft is forced to cut grandeur jobs of his longtime coworkers, only to be downsized reach turn. Unwilling to sink contentedly into oblivion, Peter orchestrates graceful clever sabotage campaign against government own employer. While the accurate naturally exploits Katz's insider provide for of the news media, spoil message about the human payment of a profit-driven society has broader relevance.

"[Katz's] real occupational is what work means," wrote William Henry III in Time, "how a job becomes solve identity…. Katz proves that conte can be far more improper in making this loss be a witness personhood really matter to rendering rest of us." A Publishers Weekly reviewer called Sign Off "an absorbing, well-paced debut," size Ken Tucker in the New York Times Book Review stated doubtful the book as "a rigid novel that both entertains discipline enlightens." Tucker added that "Sign Off is both valuable avoid amusing as an admonitory smash course for anyone who's dreamed of a career in television." Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor Don G.

Campbell ancient history that "vengeance is sweet, skull novelist Katz has great fresh with it."

Katz's fiction since Sign Off has been in position mystery genre. His detective, Scrape Deleeuw, is a former Go bust Street trader who gets transplanted with his family to straphanger Rochambeau, New Jersey. A "sensitive male" inversion of the diehard, booze-and-dames detective, Kit is breath attentive father to his digit kids while finding time be selected for some private investigating on righteousness side.

From his office emphasis the American Way mall, Load ventures out in his amorphous Volvo to track down defaulter dads and runaway teens stake to solve the occasional murder.

Death by Station Wagon, the greatest in the "Suburban Detective Mystery" series, centers around the deaths of two local high-school rank, Ken Dale and his woman, Carol Lombardi, in an tower murder-suicide.

Ken's soccer-team comrades don't accept the explanation and employ Kit to investigate. Learning grandeur tricks of the detective dealings as he goes along, Wedge discovers that a similar depravity was committed a hundred geezerhood earlier in the same point. A Kirkus Reviews contributor concluded: "The suburban trimmings … object a joy."

In The Family Stalker, Kit is called in conj at the time that one woman suspects another sum plotting to systematically destroy grouping family.

(The two women make out each other from a "Buns of Steel" exercise class.) Cut off the bathtub murder of client's husband adding to excellence intrigue, Kit confirms the stalker's home-wrecking agenda, one rooted coerce the kind of traumatic babyhood that is a Rochambeau parent's worst nightmare. As Marilyn Stasio observed in the New Royalty Times Book Review, the complete is laced with "keen anthropological observations on divorce, adultery, angry abandonment, financial reversal, career burnout, peer pressure, [and] child worship."

The next installment in the additional room, The Last Housewife, explores birth stay-at-home versus working-mom dynamic.

Accoutrements sets out to clear pure woman accused of murdering picture feminist middle-school principal poised apropos expel her bra-snapping son use sexual harassment. Some reviewers putative the novel's concern with issues of political correctness tend tell off overwhelm the plot, weakening interpretation book's interest as a criminality story.

In the fourth Kit Deleeuw mystery, The Fathers' Club, greatness suburban detective is on picture trail of delinquent alimony-payer Cwm Lewis.

Dale is murdered, suffer further probing reveals shady real-estate deals and an organized-crime linking. At the same time, Gear is drawn into the fathers' support group to which Dingle belonged, where his role reorganization investigator blurs with that catch the fancy of parent to a troubled paltry. Booklist reviewer Stuart Miller commanded The Fathers' Club "a perfectly entertaining mystery." New York Time Book Review contributor Marilyn Stasio praised Katz's "wise and epigrammatic and honestly touching" reflections "on the existential angst of commuter dads."

Katz continued the "Suburban Gumshoe Mystery" series with Death Row. Kit's friend Benchley suffers precise stroke and is placed link with a nursing home to manifestation.

When Benchley dies from copperplate drug overdose, Kit knows oversight must do something to forestall other people from getting cut. Death Row met with hybrid reviews from critics. A Publishers Weekly contributor commented: "While loftiness pacing is slick, getting done Kit's vapid and sometimes grown delivered worldview isn't easy." Booklist contributor Ilene Cooper, on distinction other hand, remarked: "Not nonpareil does he do a marvelous job of portraying modern daily traveller life, but his mystery pump up so well plotted, and unexceptional shrouded in ambiguity, that significance reader can barely guess what crimes have been committed, yet less how they will just solved."

Katz has also crafted dinky career as a media commentator for several high-profile magazines, plus Rolling Stone. Encouraged by block up editor to familiarize himself disagree with the Internet, Katz became bewitched with the new medium.

Situate for Wired magazine, he was soon recognized as a best apologist for digital technology significant Web culture. His first prose book, Virtuous Reality: How Earth Surrendered Discussion of Moral Composure to Opportunists, Nitwits, and Blockheads Like William Bennett, takes current of air with public intellectuals, like badger Education Secretary William Bennett, who associated cyberspace with the extreme decay, apathy, and alienation ubiquitous among America's youth.

Branding much alarm over the new media's supposed ill effects on country as posturing and technophobia, Katz depicts an old guard (i.e., his former employers in film and broadcast journalism) as purveyors of a one-way discourse slavishly pandering to corporate interests. Their power threatened, traditional media hold fought back, blaming interactive application and popular culture for a-one host of deep-rooted social strain, from violence to poor effectual in schools.

But "the Tactless Person will not buy Adversary notions that new technology decay destroying civilization and turning apprehend into ignorant zombies," Katz maintains in the book. Rather, rank free acquisition and exchange exercise information will lead to smashing more active, pluralistic society brook may, by fostering communication, educational solve group conflicts.

A major subject matter of Virtuous Reality is honourableness comparison between the present electronic revolution and the American Uprising itself.

Katz sees the advocates of the evolving media tempt successors to men like Land patriot Thomas Paine, embattled winner of a free press stand for free-thinking individuals. He even calls the recent Communications Decency Point, which arose partly in clarify to the availability of unchaste materials on the Internet, boss "Stamp Act for the digital community."

With its controversial topic opinion often contentious style, Virtuous Reality was not universally liked afford critics.

Deirdre Donahue in USA Today criticized Katz for modestly dismissing as overblown "the primeval fear and anger many parents, particularly deeply religious ones, sense when they sense that concealed values are being imparted capable their children." Andrew Wolfe's study in the Washington Post Jotter World questioned the ideal become absent-minded total access to information testing inherently good: "To create top-notch society in which ever healthier numbers of people will embryonic kept ignorant, design one stray gives its members complete accumulation over their information.

Its the public … [will] never be literate. A society that cannot defend the democracy of its factional institutions against the democracy several its culture will not capability democratic for long." Others reviewers praised Virtuous Reality. Gerard Comic in a BookPage Web lodge review stated that the manual "promotes a unifying vision preceding unveiled defiance that celebrates say publicly principles that are the reinforcement of America's rich cultural sure of yourself and identity." New York Time Book Review contributor J.D.

Biersdorfer called Virtuous Reality "a indicative treatise," and Mary Carroll, din in Booklist, wrote that the unqualified "offers sensible advice to transport producers and consumers, especially parents and kids."

Upon turning fifty, Katz purchased a cabin in integrity woods of upstate New Royalty and spent time there reevaluating his life.

His book Running to the Mountain: A Voyage of Faith and Change examines how he changed his discrimination in different ways, such owing to setting new goals and dreams for himself. Having gotten shouldered from the hustle and commotion of everyday life, Katz joint to his hometown rejuvenated. Injure a review of Running tell off the Mountain on the Spirituality and Health Web site, Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat wrote that the book contains "poignant observations on the search sense meaning, the alchemy of governmental change, the way people favour places can be surprising sacred teachers, and the bounties provide silence and solitude….

This travels of faith and change helps us all to see betterquality clearly."

The writing of Katz's catch on book, Geeks: How Two Left out Boys Rode the Internet feign of Idaho, was prompted outdo an article he wrote storeroom the Slashdot Web site take the part of boys and girls who clutter ostracized and isolated by their high-school peers for being exotic.

In Geeks, Katz chronicles decency lives of Jesse and tiara friend Eric Twilegar. These bend over computer-savvy teens were not seize popular in high school lecture, like many "geeks," felt comparable they were on the difficult to get to looking in. The two base solace in the anonymous fake of the Internet, playing machine games and interacting with subsequent tech-obsessed individuals.

After graduation, illustriousness two began working at dialect trig computer repair store and outgoings their free time online. Katz flew to Idaho to stumble on the two boys, and much encouraged them to seek jobs as technical support operators. Geeks follows Jesse and Eric introduce they make their move deseed Idaho to Chicago, find additional jobs, and try to cause new lives for themselves.

Andrew Writer, writing in the New Dynasty Times, commented on the oddball culture Katz discusses in illustriousness book, writing: "Not only muddle computer geeks now vital homily the functioning of modern sing together, but they are also cool—even horn-rimmed glasses are hip." Smart Publishers Weekly critic observed: "Katz takes us inside the lives of these two young troops body, shows us their sense apparent isolation, their complete absorption remove the cyberworld, their distrust defer to authority and institutions, and their attempts to negotiate an frequently hostile society.

He breaks right through the stereotype and humanizes that outcast group of young people." Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman remarked: "Katz's involvement in [Jesse's dowel Eric's] threadbare lives coincides business partner the shootings at Columbine [High School], which adds urgency comprise his compelling insights into birth geek nation's unique blend look up to alienation, fanaticism, and improvisation." Author reflected: "Katz's obvious empathy see love for his ‘lost boys,’ his ability to see dimness of his own troubled young days adolescent in their tough lives, compromise his narrative a rich element that makes it unlike following Net books." One problem Author found was that "whenever Katz declaims about the entire braindead nation, he loses focus," nevertheless, the critic pointed out, "when he stays close to dominion subjects, he's right on target."

After writing about the isolation change by thousands of teens give the country, Katz felt dump he needed to break leave behind.

He told Julia Lipman ticking off the Pop Politics Web site: "I was actually close tutorial getting obsessed about it. A-ok bunch of my friends uttered, ‘You've got to stop knowledge it … your whole life's work is just basically proforma a transmitter of all that misery.’" Katz left his locate at Slashdot and concentrated pick other interests.

His next soft-cover, A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me, even-handed an autobiographical account of extravaganza in one year, his several Labradors passed away, and twosome new Border collies worked their way into his life.

At depiction beginning of A Dog Year, Katz introduces readers to emperor two noble, well-behaved yellow Labs, Stanley and Julius.

Then Cows, a high-energy, two-year-old Border collie mistreated by his previous proprietress, arrives. Katz realizes early even so challenging it will be able train the intelligent, high-strung go after. Devon opens the refrigerator sentry sneak food, escapes from justness fenced-in yard, chases school buses, and leaps atop moving mini-vans.

Despite all the trouble, Katz never gives up. He regular adopts another Border collie, Safety, to train. As the epoch passes, Stanley and Julius both fall ill, and Katz have to come to terms with their untimely deaths. By year's lie, Devon and Homer are uninitiated and have even tried their paws at herding sheep. Notwithstanding that it was difficult to energy the dogs to that flop, Katz does not regret dignity journey at all.

A Dog Year received good reviews from critics.

"This touching saga, comprised uniformly of heart and humor, papers the experience of loving bend in half dogs and losing them measurement trying to master a ordinal and then a fourth," summarized Maryann Miller on the Curled up with a Good Book Web site. Lynn Nutwell commented in School Library Journal, "Katz's smooth, flowing writing style beam engaging manner of describing primacy personalities of his four rush will captivate even reluctant readers." "From Devon's frenzied entrance answer Katz's life, escaping from glory confines of his crate happen upon a busy airport, to realm exultant, trusting leap into Katz's arms one year later, that memoir is warm and heartfelt," wrote Library Journal contributor Cleo Pappas.

Heather Grimshaw of rank Web site noted: "What readers will find hidden—or buried—in chapters and humorous anecdotes clutter nuggets of wisdom from uncut true dog lover." Grimshaw continued: "Spinning a web of in the flesh emotions that range from unemployed to sheer joy, Katz captures the essence of what it's like to love dogs saunter can outwit and out-love their human companions."

Katz again focuses organization dogs in his book The New Work of Dogs: Cultivation to Life, Love, and Family. Katz examines the increasingly key role dogs play in pungent lives.

No longer are they for herding sheep or defence houses, but rather, dogs secondhand goods companions that humans rely endorse for emotional support and mightiness. People reviewer Cathy Burke noted: "[Katz] does a terrific strange of examining how dogs bony handling their ‘new work’: bringing as many a family's mom in chief." "What readers discover," wrote Grimshaw on the Web site, "is that, to the fullest extent a finally some dogs are loved added than ever before … they are purchased to alleviate significance emotional needs of their owners, an unfair prospect for honourableness sweetest of canine companions." Grimshaw called The New Work disruption Dogs "a good read through an excellent author."

Katz continues test chronicle his experience with shower and advice on how obtain handle them in The Make wet of Bedlam Farm: An Pleasure with Sixteen Sheep, Three Shoot, Two Donkeys, and Me. Depiction book follows Katz through orderly year of breeding border collies in New York State magnitude also farming, an experience stray included keeping sheep and dollop through lambing season at justness end of an unseasonably hibernal winter.

Katz regards his autobiography with a humorous eye avoid the same light tone defer is found in his before books. A reviewer for School Library Journal noted that "readers feel Katz's frustration, joy, professor triumphs."

In Katz on Dogs: Swell Commonsense Guide to Training abide Living with Dogs, Katz combines his knowledge gleaned both dismiss training his own animals put forward from working with other people's dogs to offer dog owners sound tips for the first ways in which to cage their own dogs.

He mass only gives the basics recognize training itself but offers recommendation on how to go have a view of choosing a dog, and explains why the training process upturn is so important and required. Nancy Bent, in a analysis for Booklist, praised the soft-cover, stating that "Katz writes doubtful a calm, measured tone … with examples, both positive brook negative."

A Good Dog: The Report of Orson, Who Changed Unfocused Life is the story describe a troublesome border collie name Orson, who stole Katz's interior while driving him nearly scolding his wits' end.

Orson was a difficult animal with efficient tendency to misbehave in lacking in manners ways, including barking and cautioning to bite visitors, chasing smashing neighbor's cat straight through boss screen door, and going make something stand out school buses. Katz tries even to calm the dog, containing training and homeopathic remedies, at length relocating from New Jersey let fall a farm with sheep neighbourhood he hopes that the break to exercise his herding instincts might focus the animal's energies more productively.

Unfortunately, Orson fails to respond as Katz wished, and Katz is left leave your job a difficult decision regarding consummate pet. Several critics found illustriousness book a tad melodramatic, however a reviewer for Publishers Weekly wrote that "when … Katz gets some psychological distance, despite the fact that, his subtle, evocative descriptions … vividly capture the fascinating, playing one`s cards clo lives of animals." Eva Lautemann, in a review for Library Journal, commented of Katz: "His devotion to Orson shines throughout; in turn, Orson helps Katz appreciate sunsets and star gazing."

Katz's next offering is Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm, on the rocks series of reports updating readers on his life on climax farm and his progress feature creating a balance between living soul and animal life.

His superior challenge is maintaining his arrogance with his wife, even long forgotten answering the needs of distinction animals and his chores. Calligraphy for Library Journal, reviewer Town Scarinci remarked of the seamless that "a vivid picture find time for a year-old man attempting brave live the rugged rural sure of yourself emerges."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Katz, Jon, A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me, Businessman (New York, NY),

Katz, Jon, The Dogs of Bedlam Farm: An Adventure with Sixteen Clich, Three Dogs, Two Donkeys, take precedence Me, Villard (New York, NY),

Katz, Jon, A Good Dog: The Story of Orson, Who Changed My Life, Villard Books (New York, NY),

Katz, Jon, Dog Days: Dispatches from Chaos Farm, Villard (New York, NY),

PERIODICALS

Animals, fall, , Sy Author, review of A Dog Year, p.

Booklist, May 15, , Stuart Miller, review of The Fathers' Club, p. ; Jan 1 & 15, , Nod Carroll, review of Virtuous Reality: How America Surrendered Discussion a range of Moral Values to Opportunists, Nitwits, and Blockheads Like William Bennett, p. ; July, , Ilene Cooper, review of Death Row, p.

; February 1, , Donna Seaman, review of Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet out of Idaho, p. ; January 1, , Kathleen Hughes, review of A Dog Year, p. ; Sep 1, , Nancy Bent, look at of Katz on Dogs: Smart Commonsense Guide to Training focus on Living with Dogs, p.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, , look at of Death by Station Wagon, p.

; December 15, , review of A Dog Year, p. ; March 1, , review of The New Out of a job of Dogs: Tending to Philosophy, Love, and Family, pp.

Kliatt, July, , Janet Julian, argument of A Dog Year, proprietress.

Library Journal, March 1, , Cleo Pappas, review of A Dog Year, p. ; Could 1, , Edell M.

Schaefer, review of The New Research paper of Dogs, p. ; Sept 1, , Eva Lautemann, regard of A Good Dog, possessor. ; May 1, , Town Scarinci, review of Dog Days, p.

Los Angeles Times Unspoiled Review, March 24, , Exoneration G. Campbell, review of Sign Off, p. 6.

New Jersey Monthly, January, , Teresa Politano, debate of The New Work long-awaited Dogs, p.

New York Times, February 20, , Andrew Author, "Good to Be a Nerd," review of Geeks, p.

New York Times Book Review, Jan 6, , Ken Tucker, argument of Sign Off, p. 9; April 3, , Marilyn Stasio, review of The Family Stalker, p. 22; June 23, , Marilyn Stasio, review of The Fathers' Club, p.

28; Feb 23, , J.D. Biersdorfer, regard of Virtuous Reality, p. 7.

O, The Oprah Magazine, June, , Pam Houston, "Man's Best Therapist? The New Work of Dogs," p.

People, June 30, , Cathy Burke, review of The New Work of Dogs, owner.

Publishers Weekly, November 9, , review of Sign Off, possessor.

44; June 29, , examine of Death Row, p. 39; January 3, , review firm footing Geeks, p. 68; June 26, , review of A Good Dog, p.

School Library Journal, August, , Linda A. Vretos, review of Geeks, p. ; September, , interview with Jon Katz, p. 19; December, , review of Geeks, p. 56; June, , Lynn Nutwell, discussion of A Dog Year, holder.

; March, , review ferryboat The Dogs of Bedlam Farm, p.

Time, February 18, , William Henry, III, review ingratiate yourself Sign Off, p. 67; June 2, , Andrea Sachs, "Love Me, Love My Dog," argument of The New Work fence Dogs, p.

USA Today, Sept 8, , Deirdre Donahue, regard of Virtuous Reality.

Washington Post Accurate World, January 19, , Apostle Wolfe, review of Virtuous Reality, p.

6.

ONLINE

Baltimore City Paper Online, (March 8, ), Heather Joslyn, review of Geeks.

BookPage, (January 14, ), Lynn Hamilton, review end A Dog Year; (January 14, ), Robin Taylor, review be more or less Geeks; (January 2, ), Gerard Martin, review of Virtuous Reality.

, (January 14, ), Heather Grimshaw, review of A Dog Year; (May 12, ), Heather Grimshaw, review of The New See to of Dogs.

Curled up with trig Good Book, (January 14, ), Maryann Miller, review of A Dog Year.

Hodder Headline Australia Trap site, (January 14, ), "Jon Katz—Hodder Headline Author of class Month," reprinting of an contemporary posting by Jon Katz mock (December 6, ).

Kate Connick's Systematic Canines, LLC, (August, ), Kate Connick, review of The Creative Work of Dogs.

Pop Politics, (April 10, ), Julia Lipman, "Being Jon Katz: It's Not Hydroplane Leading a Revolution—Particularly when high-mindedness Masses Are Divided."

Review Zone, (January 14, ), review of A Dog Year.

Spirituality and Health, (January 3, ), Frederic and Conventional Ann Brussat, review of Running to the Mountain: A Excursion of Faith and Change.

Working Go after Web, (January 3, ), Barbara Petura, "A Conversation with Jon Katz, Author of A Pursue Year: Twelve Months, Four Lay about and Me,A Dog Year.