Winik, Jay 1957-

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WINIK, Jay 1957-

PERSONAL:

Born February 8, 1957, in New Haven, CT; son of Herbert Edward Winik and Marilyn Joan (Fishman) Abrams; married Lyric Wallwork (a writer and columnist), November 17, 1991. Education: Yale University, B.A. (psychology, cum laude), 1980, Ph.D. (political science), 1993; London School of Economics, M.Sc. (international relations, with distinction), 1981. Hobbies and other interests: Tennis.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Chevy Chase, MD. Office—University of Maryland, School of Public Affairs, Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, 4113 Van Munching Hall, College Park, MD 20742; fax: 301-403-8107. Agent—Carlisle & Company, 260 West 39th St., New York, NY 10018. E-mail—jaywinik.erols.com.

CAREER:

Author, historian, political scientist, and educator. University of Maryland School of Public Affairs, senior fellow, 1991—, adjunct professor; Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, senior scholar. RAND Corporation, arms control consultant, 1983; chief speechwriter to Russian Ambassador Benjamin Netanyahu, 1984; U.S. House Commission on Armed Services, senior staff member, 1985-88; Democratic National Convention 1986 policy commission, principal advisor for defense and foreign policy; select committee to investigate covert arms transactions with Iran, staff member, 1987; Center for Strategic and International Studies, visiting fellow, 1988; Defense Secretary's Commission on Base Realignment and Closure, deputy executive director, 1988; Office of Senator Charles S. Robb and Senate Commission on Foreign Relations, legislative assistant, 1989-91; advisor to U.S. Secretary of Defense, 1993. Political commentator for MSNBC and regular guest on The History Center, History Channel.

MEMBER:

Council on Foreign Relations, Commonwealth Club of California (honorary member).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Books to Remember selection, New York Public Library, 2001, and Walt Whitman Civil War Roundtable Award, 2002, both for April 1865: The Month That Saved America.

WRITINGS:

On the Brink: The Dramatic, Behind-the-Scenes Saga of the Reagan Era and the Men and Women Who Won the Cold War, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1996.

April 1865: The Month That Saved America, Harper-Collins (New York, NY), 2001.

Contributor to periodicals such as Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Washington Quarterly, and Washingtonian.

ADAPTATIONS:

April 1865: The Month That Saved America was the basis of a television documentary for A&E and History Channel.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Developer, writer, and host of Wars of the Future, a documentary for Public Television.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jay Winik is a prominent historian, political scientist, educator, and expert on war whose distinguished career spans more than twenty years of national and international politics, and whose opinions are still sought after by presidential administrations. Winik has frequently appeared on television as a commentator and consultant on such networks as MSNBC, CNN, C-Span, the History Channel, Fox News, NBC, PBS, and more.

Prior to the 2001 bombing campaign by the United States in Afghanistan, Vice President Dick Cheney invited Winik to dinner to discuss historical precedents and lessons to be learned for the Bush White House's war on terrorism. Winik served as an advisor to former U.S. Defense Secretary Les Aspin, and was deputy director of the first blue-ribbon base-closure commission in the country. He has served in senior policy positions in both bodies of Congress and in the executive branch of the United States. He has observed first-hand many civil wars throughout the world, and he helped create the United Nations plan for ending the Cambodian civil war.

On the Brink: The Dramatic, Behind-the-Scenes Saga of the Reagan Era and the Men and Women Who Won the Cold War provides a comprehensive account of the end of the cold-war era. Winik "makes a passionate case for Ronald Reagan as the victor of the Cold War," remarked Peter W. Rodman in the Times Literary Supplement. "Overcoming the obstacles of a leftist Congress and media, Reagan increased political, economic, military, and moral pressures on the evil Soviet empire," Rodman continued. "Winik's is an uncritical presentation of this thesis, but the book's interest lies less in its sometimes breathless journalistic detail of the American scene than its correct perception of the remarkable and pivotal role played in all this by a group of ex-Democrats." These Democrats—Jeane Kirkpatrick, Max Kampelman, Elliot Abrams, and Richard Perle—"gave practical form to Reagan's own daring concept of seeking victory over Soviet communism, rather than mere containment and coexistence," noted Stephen S. Rosenfeld in the Washington Post. Perle "fought the Soviet arms buildup and promoted a vigorous nuclear-arms policy that ultimately bankrupted the Soviet government," commented Adrian Karatnycky in the Wall Street Journal. Kampelman "elevated human rights to the center stage of the diplomatic give-and-take" with the Soviets, Karatnycky wrote; Kirkpatrick "exposed Soviet mendacity and hypocrisy" in her role as U.N. ambassador; and Abrams served as "a central figure in the struggle against Soviet-backed insurgencies in Central America."

Winik's account is a neoconservative one, noted Robert A. Divine in Political Science Quarterly. "He makes no effort to disguise his sympathies, and the result is a one-sided account that makes a strong but not fully convincing case." Mark P. Lagon, writing in Perspectives on Political Science, observed that "no serious book had been written that made a convincing case that Reagan won the Cold War, how he did it, and with whom—until now." Karatnycky concluded, "Winik succeeds in telling an absorbing tale."

In April 1865: The Month That Saved America, Winik offers a detailed account of the last month of the U.S. Civil War, when disaster and destruction predominated but human dignity and character served more than bullets and artillery to bring a final close to a devastating era of American history. In April 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; the Confederate capital of Richmond fell and was evacuated; and the remaining two Confederate armies gave in, with Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendering to Union general Ulysses S. Grant. Rather than degenerate into the protracted, crippling misery of ongoing guerilla warfare, which Confederate president Jefferson Davis encouraged, the remaining remnants of the Confederate armies dissolved, and the seemingly infinite rift between the North and the South began to heal. Robert E. Lee faced the decision of whether to surrender or flee to the hills to continue the war from behind trees and rocks.

In his book Winik explores Lee's racking decision in great detail. In the end, the general knew the devastation a decision for anything other than peace would bring to his beloved country. "Lee could have opted for anarchy; Grant could have behaved less generously," New York Times Book Review critic Max Byrd noted. "But to their eternal credit, the two great soldiers chose peace. So, in Winik's words, 'men were not hanged, they were saluted … they were not humiliated or beaten, they were embraced. Some of this was by design; much of it occurred totally spontaneously. All of it mattered.'"

"I was trying to write a narrative of what happened at the end of the war, but in such a way that I could explore why our civil war did not end with dire consequences, even though it easily could have," Winik explained in an interview with Donald A. Yerxa for Books & Culture. "And I wanted to place readers back into the closing weeks of the war to help them get a sense of the crucial decisions as they were being made, so that they could appreciate the tension and the drama that the participants themselves experienced."

April 1865 "provides a splendid combination of history, civics lesson, and biography, but Mr. Winik is also a marvelous storyteller," remarked Jeff Shaara in the Wall Street Journal. "Moving through that momentous month, the reader is carried with breathtaking sorrow through the death of Abraham Lincoln and its devastating effects," and the other signal events of the month, Shaara commented. Byrd called April 1865 "a marvelous book. It has its share of faults—the author sentimentalizes Lee, he underestimates Grant, he sometimes overstates, but these and all other objections are swept aside in the furiously dramatic rush of the narrative and the brilliant freshness of the argument." National Review critic Thomas Mallon noted that "Winik's style is lively to the point of exuberance," and a Publishers Weekly reviewer commented that "Winik's ability to see the big picture in the close-up (and vice versa), and to compose riveting narrative, is masterful."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Heritage, April, 2001, review of April 1865: The Month That Saved America, p. 14.

Booklist, March 15, 1996, Gilbert Taylor, review of On the Brink: The Dramatic, Behind-the-Scenes Saga of the Reagan Era and the Men and Women Who Won the Cold War, p. 1223.

Books & Culture, July-August, 2003, Donald Yerxa, "How the War Might Have Ended: A Conversation with Historian Jay Winik," p. 22.

Foreign Policy, fall, 1996, John Steinbruner, review of On the Brink, p. 169.

Library Journal, March 15, 1996, review of On the Brink, p. 86; April 1, 2001, Brooks D. Simpson, review of April 1865, p. 116.

National Review, April 30, 2001, Thomas Mallon, "The Reunion."

New York Times, April 25, 2001, Richard Bernstein, "The Month That Lincoln Was Shot," p. B9.

New York Times Book Review, April 14, 1996, review of On the Brink, p. 31; April 22, 2001, Max Byrd, "The Month That Was," p. 25.

Orbis, winter, 1999, review of On the Brink, p. 153.

Perspectives on Political Science, summer, 1997, Mark P. Lagon, review of On the Brink, p. 170.

Political Science Quarterly, fall, 1997, Robert A. Divine, review of On the Brink, p. 519.

Presidential Studies Quarterly, spring, 1997, William C. Spragens, review of On the Brink, p. 368.

Publishers Weekly, January 29, 1996, review of On the Brink, p. 90; February 19, 2001, review of April 1865, p. 78.

SAIS Review, winter-spring, 1997, Bill S. Mikhail, review of On the Brink, p. 201.

Times Literary Supplement, July 12, 1996, Peter W. Rodman, "Against Isolationism," p. 27.

Wall Street Journal, April 10, 1996, Adrian Karatnycky, "A Front-row Seat at Cold War's Final Phase," p. A15; April 2, 2001, Jeff Shaara, "Ending a War, Keeping the Peace," p. A20.

Washington Post, April 12, 1996, Stephen S. Rosenfeld, "Who Killed Communism?," p. A25; April 13, 2003, Linda Wheeler, "Film Explores Decision to Surrender" (review of television film of April 1865), p. T8.