Horowitz, Joy

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Horowitz, Joy

PERSONAL:

Born in Cleveland, OH; married; has children. Education: Harvard University, B.A. (cum laude), 1975; Yale University, M.S.L., 1982.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Santa Monica, CA.

CAREER:

Writer. Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Los Angeles, CA, former copy girl, sports writer, and reporter; Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. (CBS), Los Angeles, CA, former investigative producer; Los Angeles Times, former feature writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Pulitzer Prize nomination for a Los Angeles Times report on indoor air pollution; Ford Foundation fellowship; Sunday Magazine Editors' Association award for Los Angeles Times article "Greetings from Pearlie and Tessie"; environmental journalism fellowship, National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii.

WRITINGS:

Tessie and Pearlie: A Granddaughter's Story, Scribner (New York, NY), 1996.

Parts per Million: The Poisoning of Beverly Hills High School, Viking (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including the New York Times, New Yorker, Time, Los Angeles Times Magazine, and Harper's Bazaar.

SIDELIGHTS:

A Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, Joy Horowitz has worked as an investigative reporter and producer for newspapers and television. Her Pulitzer nomination was for a story written on air pollution, and she has also earned a fellowship for environmental journalism. With a master's degree in law, Horowitz is also well equipped to discus the legalities of some of the stories on which she reports. She brings these skills and background to the fore in her book Parts per Million: The Poisoning of Beverly Hills High School. On a more personal note, she is also the author of Tessie and Pearlie: A Granddaughter's Story, in which she relates the stories and very different personalities of her two grandmothers.

Tessie and Pearlie is a colorful portrayal of Horowitz's grandmothers, both of whom were ninety-three at the time of the book's writing. Tessie is an Orthodox Jew who did not go to the author's wedding on the grounds that she was marrying a gentile; Pearlie is more vivacious, with a love of dancing and cooking, but she has a greater fear of death than Tessie. Both women share a common experience in their Yiddish immigrant background and of growing up in an era where women were viewed very differently than today. Horowitz draws on interviews, as well as letters, recipes, and photographs, to compile her book. A Publishers Weekly critic described the result as a "powerful memoir overflowing with warmth and humor," while Booklist reviewer Ilene Cooper appreciated the author's effort in chronicling "a dying breed" and sharing the "adorable, annoying … conversations peppered with witticisms and Yiddish phrases."

Parts per Million was inspired by Horowitz's return to Beverly Hills High School for her thirtieth class reunion. While she was there, she learned that many of her classmates, as well as others attending or teaching at the school, had died of cancer. The culprit was apparently an oil well located on the property and owned by a company called Venoco. The investigation into the matter was actually begun by another woman from the school, Lori Moss, who had enlisted the help of Erin Brockovich, the lawyer's assistant whose story of investigating the health hazards of industrial pollution had been turned into a movie starring Julia Roberts. Horowitz began an investigation on her own, learning that Venoco was paying the school 250,000 dollars a year for the right to drill oil on the property and that administrators and local government did not seem to care that the drilling seemed to be leading to a rise in cancer rates.

"Horowitz is careful to be impartial," observed Elizabeth Holden in a Bookslut Web site review, and instead of offering her direct opinion she includes considerable details in a lengthy book in which the accumulation of information in the case is presented to allow readers to make up their own minds. "It's a complicated saga that reads alternately like a legal thriller, science textbook, and very human drama," concluded Holden. Horowitz provides readers with facts about the families who have suffered from members having cancer, and she relates the court case that was eventually thrown out by a judge who dismissed the evidence as unconvincing. Local officials essentially told residents that if they were concerned about the pollution then they were free to move out of town with their families. All of this prompts "the author to decry, with good cause, the state of the current judiciary and regulatory mechanisms," according to a Kirkus Reviews writer. But "Horowitz is better at raising such questions than answering them, largely because in her case the truth does not come out," concluded a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Horowitz, Joy, Tessie and Pearlie: A Granddaughter's Story, Scribner (New York, NY), 1996.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 1996, Ilene Cooper, review of Tessie and Pearlie, p. 1670; July 1, 2007, Vanessa Bush, review of Parts per Million: The Poisoning of Beverly Hills High School, p. 15.

E, September 1, 2007, "Toxic High, 90210," p. 62.

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2007, review of Parts per Million.

Publishers Weekly, April 15, 1996, review of Tessie and Pearlie, p. 55; May 14, 2007, review of Parts per Million, p. 43.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), May 4, 1997, review of Tessie and Pearlie, p. 8.