Joshua Prager (writer)

Joshua Harris Prager (born 1971) is an American journalist and author.

For other people with the same name, see Joshua Prager (disambiguation).

Biography

Joshua Harris Prager was born in a Jewish family in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. Prager is the son of Columbia University physician and medical ethics expert Kenneth Prager, and the nephew of commentator Dennis Prager.[1] He attended the Moriah School in Englewood, New Jersey, the Ramaz High School in Manhattan,[2] and Columbia College, where he studied music theory.[3]

In May 1990, Prager was paralyzed in a road accident in Israel when a truck driver rammed into the minibus in which he was riding.[4]

He is now married and has two daughters. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Literary career

Prager often writes of historical secrets. He found the reclusive heir of Margaret Wise Brown, author of the classic children's book Goodnight Moon.[5] He confirmed the decades-long rumor that the New York Giants had stolen signs en route to the 1951 pennant.[6] He revealed that baseball pitcher Ralph Branca (pitcher in the aforementioned baseball game) was born to a Jewish mother.[7] He named the only anonymous winner in the history of the Pulitzer Prizes, the Iranian photographer Jahangir Razmi.[8] He revealed the suicides of the parents of Swedish humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg.[9] And he identified the anonymous patron in the famous book Joe Gould's Secret.[10]

Prager has written for publications including Vanity Fair,[11][12] the New York Times,[7] and the Wall Street Journal, where he was a senior writer for eight years.[13] His first book The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World, is about the Shot Heard 'Round the World, which occurred during a famous 1951 baseball playoff game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants.

His second book, Half Life: Reflections from Jerusalem on a Broken Neck is about the road accident in Israel that left him paralyzed.[14] He describes his rehabilitation and recovery from the accident; how he tracked down his fellow passengers and the wife of the bus driver, who was killed in the accident; and his meeting with the truck driver, who rambled on about his own suffering and expressed no remorse for his actions.[15]

In 2016 Prager published 100 Years: Wisdom From Famous Writers on Every Year of Your Life, a book of quotations designed by Milton Glaser[16]

Prager has lectured at venues including TED[13] and Google,[17] and has received fellowships from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism[18] and the Fulbright Program.[19]

References
  1. Ford, Luke. Article on Dennis Prager, LukeFord.net (March 13, 1998).
  2. Cohen, Irwin. "Baseball Is Dull Only To Those With Dull Minds", The Jewish Press, February 7, 2007. "The best book you can get about Thomson's homer, the 1951 season, the players, sign-stealing and more is Joshua Prager's The Echoing Green. Prager, who grew up in New Jersey, went to Moriah Day School, Ramaz High School and spent a year in yeshiva after high school before going on to college and a writing career with The Wall Street Journal."
  3. http://joshuaprager.com/wsj"Joshua Prager grew up in New Jersey and studied music theory at Columbia College."
  4. Prager, Joshua."A Movie Stokes My Memories",The Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2007.
  5. Joshua Prager (September 8, 2000). "Runaway Money". Wall Street Journal. p. A1. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007.
  6. Joshua Prager (January 31, 2001). "Inside Baseball". Wall Street Journal. p. A1. Archived from the original on January 13, 2013.
  7. Joshua Prager (August 14, 2011). "For Branca, an Asterisk of a Different Kind". New York Times.
  8. Joshua Prager (December 2, 2006). "A Chilling Photograph's Hidden History". Wall Street Journal. p. A1.
  9. Joshua Prager (February 28, 2009). "The Wallenberg Curse". Wall Street Journal. p. A1.
  10. Joshua Prager (February 11, 2014). "A Decades Long Literary Mystery is Solved". Vanity Fair.
  11. Prager, Joshua (18 January 2013), "The Accidental Activist", Vanity Fair
  12. Prager, Joshua (19 January 2017), "Roe v. Wade's Secret Heroine Tells Her Story", Vanity Fair
  13. TEDTalentSearch (26 June 2012). "Joshua Prager: My personal half-life". Retrieved 21 November 2018 – via YouTube.
  14. Half-life Archived 2013-03-15 at the Wayback Machine
  15. The sound of one finger typing, Haaretz
  16. Prager, Joshua. "Wisdom from great writers on every year of life". www.ted.com. Retrieved 2016-05-04.
  17. Talks at Google (16 May 2008). "Authors@Google: Josh Prager". Retrieved 21 November 2018 – via YouTube.
  18. "2 AP staffers among 24 selected as Nieman Fellows". Retrieved 21 November 2018.
  19. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-02-02. Retrieved 2013-02-24.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
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