Anthony Summers Popular Books

Anthony Summers Biography & Facts

Anthony Bruce Summers (born 21 December 1942) is an Irish author. He is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and has written ten non-fiction books. He worked for the BBC in current affairs coverage as a producer and then as an assistant editor of the long-running investigative documentary series Panorama. His first book was published in 1976. Career Summers is an Irish citizen who has been working with Robbyn Swan for more than thirty years before she became his co-author and fourth wife. After studying modern languages at Oxford University, he began work in laboring jobs, later progressing to freelance reporting for London newspapers. He later worked at Granada TV's World in Action, the UK's first tabloid public affairs program, and following that he wrote the news for the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation's Overseas Service. Later, he went back to England to BBC's Television News and then the BBC's 24 Hours, a late evening current affairs show that brought viewers international coverage of events. Summers became the BBC's youngest Producer at 24, travelling worldwide and sending filmed reports from the United States, across Central and Latin America, and the conflicts in Vietnam, the Middle East, and Africa. A main focus, though, was on the momentous events of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States – such as on-the-spot reports, during 1968, on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and on Robert F. Kennedy's bid for the presidency. He smuggled cameras into the then Soviet Union to obtain the only TV interview with dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov – when he was under house arrest, having just won the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize. Before moving on from the BBC, Summers became an Assistant Editor of the weekly program Panorama. Based in Ireland for many years, he has since the mid-'1970s concentrated on investigative non-fiction, sometimes taking four to five years to complete a book. Works Summers has written about historical figures including Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, President John F. Kennedy, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, President Richard Nixon, and Admiral Husband Kimmel, who commanded the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. He is author of a major book on the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. He has also written biographies of celebrities Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra, and investigations of Britain's Profumo Affair and the 2007 disappearance in Portugal of the British child, Madeleine McCann. Most of Summers' books were developed as TV documentaries. Honeytrap was credited as a source for the John Hurt movie Scandal. The File on the Tsar, with Tom Mangold (1976) Summers published The File on the Tsar with former BBC colleague, Tom Mangold, in 1976. The book is on the disappearance and presumed execution of Nicholas II, last Tsar of Russia, and his family. In the UK, The Sunday Times said it "demolished the massacre story beyond recovery. There is not a dull page in this book." In the U.S.A., the Los Angeles Times called it "a compelling and impressive work", Cosmopolitan deemed it "sensational...a masterful work of great suspense, meticulously researched". In a comparison that must surely have pleased the authors, The Toronto Sun rated the book's "superlative investigative reporting that makes Woodward and Bernstein seem like beginners." Conspiracy (1980), since updated as Not in Your Lifetime (1998 and 2013) In the late 1970s Summers was working on a documentary for Panorama about the recently released report from the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations. Interviews for that program served as the impetus for Summers' 1980 book on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Conspiracy. Conspiracy was later updated as Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the JFK Assassination. In the most recent, 2013, edition, Summers was first to report the alleged confession of a Cuban sharpshooter, Herminio Diaz Garcia, to have taken part in the assassination. The book won the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction in 1980. The New York Times described Conspiracy as "important...serves to dramatize, as no previous book has done, the superficiality of the Warren Commission's investigation." The Boston Globe described Conspiracy as "the closest thing we have that literary chimera, a definitive work on the events in Dallas." In the UK, The Daily Telegraph described Summers' approach as "dismissing the more fevered theories while casting doubt on the Warren Commission". Author and journalist Burton Hersh described Conspiracy as "bedrock to the literature". Goddess, the Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe (1985) The Boston Globe's reviewer described Summers' biography of Marilyn Monroe as "mesmerizing, disturbing...reads like something out of a Robert Ludlum thriller." The New York Times' Christopher Lehmann Haupt wrote that the book made for "extraordinary reading...the ghost of Marilyn Monroe cries out in these pages." Lehmann-Haupt wrote that one of Summers's most sensational conclusions was that Robert F. Kennedy was involved with Monroe's death and that at some point he removed evidence that she was sexually involved with him and his brother from the scene. About these conclusions, Lehmann-Haupt wrote "[I]t's possible that the exposure of hidden weaknesses in [Summers'] case may turn his reconstruction to dust. But his case is singularly impressive." Summers' research is criticised by the literature professor Sarah Churchwell in her work The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe. Churchwell observes that although Summers interviewed 650 people, "The interviews often repeat second- or third-hand accounts of what someone else said, and neither Summers nor his sources is [sic] particularly dispassionate". Churchwell writes that "Summers proffers – but does not prove – a series of sensational claims". In April 2022, Netflix premiered a feature-length documentary film, The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, based on the Goddess book, directed by Emma Cooper. Summers features prominently in the film, which includes Summers' previously unreleased audiotaped interviews of close friends and contacts of the actress. Honeytrap, the Secret Lives of Stephen Ward, with Stephen Dorril (1987) Summers' and Stephen Dorril's investigation of the British political scandal known as the Profumo Affair was widely reviewed in the British press. The Observer said the book "ought to be read...Profumo is Italian for perfume, but the whole thing stinks to high heaven." The Tribune judged it "quite exceptional...massive demystification of the social and sexual lives of the English ruling class." Official and Confidential, The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (1993) The Christian Science Monitor described Summers' 1993 biography of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as "gritty, fast-paced and disturbing", that his "case against Hoover is overwhelming." The Philadelphia Inquirer review considered Summers' take on Hoover "an important book that should give .... Discover the Anthony Summers popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Anthony Summers books.