Malkin, Lawrence 1930-

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Malkin, Lawrence 1930-

PERSONAL:

Born July 30, 1930, in Richmond Hill, NY; son of David and Jennie Malkin; married Edith Stark, 1960; children: Elisabeth, Victoria. Education: University of Chicago, A.B., 1949; Columbia University, A.B. (with honors), 1951.

ADDRESSES:

Home—NY. Agent—Wallace & Shiel, 170 E. 77th St., New York, NY 10021. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Associated Press, United Nations bureau, London, England, correspondent, 1954-69; Time, national economics correspondent in Washington, DC, European cultural correspondent in London, bureau chief in New Delhi, India, European correspondent in Paris, France, and correspondent in Boston, MA, 1969-88; Brookings Institution, guest scholar, 1989; International Herald Tribune, New York, NY, chief U.S. correspondent, 1990-96. Military service: U.S. Army, 1952-54; served in Combat Infantry.

MEMBER:

The Century Association, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

E.W. Fairchild Award, Overseas Press Club of America, 1967; Greenwall Foundation Prize, for essay "Distributing the Gift of Life."

WRITINGS:

The National Debt, Holt (New York, NY), 1987.

Krueger's Men: The Secret Nazi Counterfeit Plot and the Prisoners of Block 19, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2006.

Author's works have been translated into seven languages.

Contributor to magazines and newspapers, including Horizon, World Policy Journal, Commentary, Connoisseur, Fortune, Times Literary Supplement, and Atlantic Monthly.

SIDELIGHTS:

Lawrence Malkin is a journalist with extensive experience as an economics correspondent. His first two books are concerned with this field, but they are very different stories. The National Debt is Malkin's criticism of the policies of the Ronald Reagan administration, which the author accuses of running up a huge national debt, along with other cases of financial irresponsibility. In what New York Times reviewer Alfred Balk described as a "thoughtful book" that "makes a persuasive case," the author explains how the White House doubled the debt to over two trillion dollars and how the ramifications would likely lead to a lower standard of living for most Americans. Although Balk criticized Malkin's arguments on several grounds, including insufficient coverage of such factors as international trends, social entitlement obligations, and outside pressures for tax cuts, the reviewer concluded that "Malkin merits admiration for the feat of sustaining interest."

Malkin's Krueger's Men: The Secret Nazi Counterfeit Plot and the Prisoners of Block 19 is about an interesting chapter of World War II history in which the Nazis successfully used concentration camp prisoners to produce millions of dollars of counterfeit British pounds to weaken their enemy's economy. A Publishers Weekly contributor found the book to be "deeply researched and tautly narrated." In a Kirkus Reviews article, another critic praised Malkin's "thorough research and authoritative voice."

Malkin once told CA: "Our economic destiny is now an inseparable part of our political future and our relations with the rest of the world. As an author, I am dedicated to explaining this in plain language that ordinary people, often desperate to understand, will be able to follow and actually enjoy reading. I write by describing events in terms of the people who make them happen, with some wit and irony, because things never happen in quite the way people foresee. Therein lies the drama of this subject."