A native of South Carolina, Marshall Frady was a journalist for more than twenty-five years, writing for Newsweek, Life, Harper's, Esquire, The New York Review of Books, The Sunday Times of London, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. He was a correspondent on Nightline; chief writer and host of ABC News' Closeup, for which he won two Emmys and the duPont-Columbia Award; and the author of six books.