Thomas E. Ricks

Thomas Ricks is a twice-awarded Pulitzer winning journalist, bestselling author, and military history columnist for The New York Times Book Review. He has written for Washington Post and Wall Street Journal and is best known for his reporting and analysis on the U.S. military, defense policy, and international conflicts. His books provide critical assessments of military strategy, leadership, and the broader implications of U.S. military engagements.

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Ricks is the author of nine books, with many bestsellers and award-winning works among them. His most recent release is Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968, which offers a revealing look into the military tactics and strategies employed by the movement to bring widespread justice and change in America. Called “illuminating, engrossing, deeply researched and vividly written” in a starred review by BookPage, the book drives home the message that the efforts of the civil rights movement were nonviolent, but not at all passive, and offers valuable lessons for confronting attacks on democracy today. In his upcoming release, Everyone Knows But You: A Tale of Murder on the Maine Coast, available June 2024, Thomas makes his crime fiction debut with a thrilling story set on the land he calls home.

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Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003-05, his most well-known book, was a #1 New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer finalist that transformed the political dialogue surrounding the war in Iraq. The Gamble: General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-08, the sequel to Fiasco, and The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today were both bestsellers. For their astute insights, both Fiasco and The Generals appeared on the U.S. Army Chief of Staff’s official reading list. 

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Other books by Ricks include First Principles and Churchill and Orwell, both New York Times bestsellers; Making the Corps, which won the Washington Monthly's "Political Book of the Year" award; and his first novel, A Soldier's Duty, about U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan, published four months before the U.S. actually did intervene there. His books have been published in Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Bulgaria, Estonia, Russia, Brazil, Korea, Taiwan and China.

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Ricks covered the U.S. military for the Washington Post from 2000 through 2008 and was part of the Post team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting about the beginning of the U.S. counteroffensive against terrorism. Prior to joining the Washington Post, Ricks maintained the same beat at the Wall Street Journal for 17 years, reporting on U.S. military activities in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan and Iraq. He was a member of the Wall Street Journal team that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2000 for a series of articles on how the U.S. military might change to meet the new demands of the 21st century.