Michael Kranish is an author, historian, and Washington

correspondent for The Boston Globe.  With degrees in political science and journalism from Syracuse University, he began his newspaper career in Florida at the Lakeland Ledger and the Miami Herald, where he wrote a series of stories about a plan to tear down much of South Beach. Kranish then moved north to The Boston Globe in 1984 and became the paper’s New England correspondent. Kranish eventually returned to his hometown and joined the Globe’s Washington Bureau, where he has covered national affairs and presidential campaigns for the last 20 years. He currently serves as the bureau’s deputy chief.

Kranish has been the Globe’s congressional reporter, White House correspondent and national political reporter, filing stories from 49 states and 25 countries. Having reported on Senator John F. Kerry for much of his career at the Globe, Kranish worked on a series of biographical stories during Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, including pieces about Kerry’s ancestry, his involvement in the Vietnam War and his leadership in the protest against that conflict. This turned into a 2004 book co-authored by Kranish, John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography.

Kranish’s latest book isThe Real Romney co-authored with fellow Boston Globe reporter  Scott Helman, a product of the Boston Globe that is published by HarperCollins (January 2012). Please visit this page for more information.

Kranish’s interest in history and biography has been longstanding. He has produced lengthy profiles about the history of the Bush family, the Vietnam War actions of presidential candidate Wesley Clark, and the family history of presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Kranish also wrote about one of the greatest if little-known sports heroes in American history, Major Taylor, an African-American who lived in Massachusetts and overcame racism to become the world cycling champion at the turn of the 20th Century.

Each of these stories relied on burrowing into archival research and on-the-ground reporting, intermingling the disciplines of journalist and historian. Following the 2004 presidential campaign, Kranish explored the possibility of writing a full-scale history on a subject that had long interested him: the Revolutionary War.

One story seemed especially intriguing: the 1781 invasion of Virginia by Benedict Arnold, which caused then-Governor Thomas Jefferson and the legislature to flee the capital of Richmond. The chapter seemed little-explored in biographies of Arnold and Jefferson; both men had gr

eater claims to fame or infamy. Early histories about these events were written without the benefit of key diaries, journals, ship records and other documentation that became available only in recent years.

With a proposal for these events in hand, Kranish was awarded a fellowship at the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, which enabled him to live in a writer’s cottage just down the slope from Monticello and directly across from the Jefferson Library, where many vital resources are stored. The resulting effort, published by Oxford University Press, is Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War.