Professor Jim Newton in the News!

Jim Newton, former long time Los Angeles Times editor and columnist and noted biographer of Earl Warren, Dwight Eisenhower and Leon Panetta, is writing a biography of Jerry Brown. The governor is cooperating with Newton.“My hope is to tell the story of modern California — its transformation into the nation’s largest, most prosperous and most divided state — through the story of its longest-serving governor, Jerry Brown,” Newton told me.Scheduled to be published by Little Brown in 2019, after Brown ends his fourth term as governor, Newton is looking for background stories to help flesh out his history.Newton said his goal is “to chronicle the period’s great developments: from the arrival of Major League Baseball to the blossoming of Silicon Valley, from the birth of modern environmentalism to the explosion of the tax revolt, from the founding of the John Birch Society to the development of the liberal, Latino, labor coalition at the center of our contemporary politics.”Newton’s three previous biographies all received critical acclaim with the Eisenhower and Panetta books achieving national best-seller status.Currently, Newton is on the UCLA faculty at the Department of Communication Studies. He also edits a new UCLA public policy magazine, Blueprint.Newton said he is excited that his new work would complete a California history he began with the Earl Warren biography.Anyone who would like to contribute information to Newton as he stiches his biography and history together may contact him at his office, 310-206-7979, or by email: jnewton100@ucla.edu.