Ron Powers is a journalist and author of many critically acclaimed books, most recently No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Illness in America (Hachette Books 2017). He is the author of Mark Twain: A Life (Free Press 2006), a New York Times bestseller and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestseller Flags of Our Fathers (Bantam 2000), with James Bradley, adapted into a major motion picture directed by Clint Eastwood. He also collaborated with the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy on his bestselling memoirs, True Compass (Twelve 2009). Powers’s other books include Tom and Huck Don’t Live Here Anymore (St. Martin’s), Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain (Basic), and Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship with John Baldwin (Crown).

He received the Pulitzer Prize in criticism while on the staff of the Chicago Sun-Times, and has contributed to leading magazines and newspapers including the New York Times Book Review, Atlantic Monthly, and Smithsonian.