Laurence Leamer

Laurence Leamer (born October 30, 1941) is an American author and journalist. Leamer is a former Ford Fellow in International Development at the University of Oregon and a former International Fellow at Columbia University. He is regarded as an expert on the Kennedy family and has appeared in numerous media outlets discussing American politics. Leamer has also written best-selling biographies of other Americans, including Johnny Carson, the Reagan family, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He has also written a book about Donald Trump's historical resort, Mar-a-Lago. His book, Capote's Women, was a national bestseller, and is being adapted as the second season of Feud starring Naomi Watts and directed by Gus Van Sant. Leamer was born in Chicago and later moved to upstate New York with his family where he attended Vestal Central High School. He attended Antioch College where he spent a year in France, studied at the Université de Besançon, and worked in a factory. He received his B.A. in History from Antioch in 1964. After his graduation, Leamer joined the Peace Corps and was stationed in the mountains of Nepal. When he returned home, Leamer studied both at the University of Oregon and the Columbia University School of Journalism, where he graduated second in his class in 1969 while being named a Pulitzer International Fellow.After finishing at Columbia, Leamer worked as an associate editor at Newsweek before turning to writing magazine articles for a range of publications, including Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, and Playboy. During this period, Leamer worked in a coal mine in West Virginia, while researching an article. During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he was the only journalist to live in a Bengali hotel in Dacca and travel to remote areas of the newborn Bangladesh. His article in Harper's won a citation from the Overseas Press Club for "Best Magazine Reporting".