Robert Coles

Robert Coles (b. October 12, 1929) is an American author, child psychiatrist, and professor at Harvard University.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, he attended Milton Academy and Harvard College, where he studied English literature. He originally intended to become a teacher or professor, but as part of his honors thesis, he interviewed the poet William Carlos Williams, who promptly persuaded him to go into medicine.

He studied medicine at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. He graduated in 1954, and after residency training in Chicago, he was drafted into the U.S. Armed Forces, under the "doctors' draft".

He served at Kiesler Air Force base in Biloxi, Mississippi, and made frequent trips into New Orleans. During these trips he witnessed scenes of racial conflict related to the desegregation of the public schools. He wrote a series of articles for "The Atlantic Monthly", profiling the African-American girl Ruby Bridges, one of the first black children to desegregate a public school in New Orleans. These articles ultimately led to his first book, and ultimately to his decision to write a series of books documenting how children and their parents deal with profound change.

His work has been recognized with numerous awards, including a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1973 for his series of books "Children of Crisis", a MacArthur Award in 1981, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, and the National Humanities Medal in 2001. He later co-founded the magazine "DoubleTake", a high-quality magazine which documented the lives of ordinary people with photographs and articles. Coles has written over seventy-five books and writes regular columns for "The New Republic", "New Oxford Review", and "American Poetry Review".

Published works

* "A Study in Courage and Fear", Volume 1 of "Children of Crisis" (Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1967)
* "Dead End School", with illustrations by Norman Rockwell (Boston: Little, Brown, 1968)
* "The Image Is You", children's photos organized by Donald Erceg with text by Coles (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1969)
* "Still Hungry in America", with photos by Al Clayton (New York: World Publishing Company, 1969)
* "Erik H. Erikson: the Growth of His Work" (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970)
* "Uprooted Children: The Early Life of Migrant Farm Workers" (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970) ISBN 0-8229-3192-3
* "Migrants, Sharecroppers, Mountaineers", Volume 2 of "Children of Crisis" (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971)
* "The South Goes North", Volume 3 of "Children of Crisis" (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971)
* "The Middle Americans; Proud and Uncertain", with photos by Jon Erikson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971)
* "Farewell to the South" (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972) ISBN 0-316-15158-0
* "The Buses Roll", with photos by Carol Baldwin and Peter T. Whitney (New York: Norton, 1974) ISBN 0-393-05529-9
* "William Carlos Williams: The knack of survival in America" (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1975) ISBN 0-8135-0800-2
* "The Mind's Fate: Ways of Seeing Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis", (Boston : Little, Brown, 1975). ISBN 0316151793
* "Eskimos, Indians, Chicanos", Volume 4 of "Children of Crisis" (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977) ISBN 0-316-15162-9
* "", Volume 5 of "Children of Crisis" (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977) ISBN 0-316-15149-1
* "A Festering Sweetness: Poems of American People" (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsbrugh Press, 1978) ISBN 0-8229-5290-4
* "The Last and First Eskimos", with photos by Alex Harris (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1978) ISBN 0-8212-0737-7
* "Women of Crisis: Lives of struggle and hope", with Jane Hallowell Coles (New York: Delacorte Press, 1978) ISBN 0-440-09536-0
* "Walker Percy: An American Search" (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979) ISBN 0316151602
* "Flannery O'Connor's South" (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980) ISBN 0-8071-0655-0
* "I Will Always Stay Me: Writings of Migrant Children", edited by Sherry Kafka and Robert Coles (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1982) ISBN 0-932012-27-2
* "Photographs of a Lifetime", photos by Dorothea Lange with an essay by Coles (Millerton, New York: Aperture, 1982) ISBN 0-89381-100-9
* "The Moral Life of Children" (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986) ISBN 0-87113-034-3
* "The Political Life of Children" (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986)
* "Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion" (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1987) ISBN 0-201-02829-8
* "Simone Weil; A Modern Pilgrimage" (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1987) ISBN 0-201-02205-2
* "Harvard Diary: Reflections of the Sacred and the Secular" (New York: Crossroad, 1988)
* "Times of Surrender: Selected Essays" (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1988) ISBN 0-87745-188-5
* "The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination" (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989) ISBN 0-395-42935-8
* "Rumors of Separate Worlds: Poems" (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989) ISBN 0-87745-258-X
* "The Spiritual Life of Children" (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990) ISBN 0-395-55999-5
* "Anna Freud: The Dream of Psychoanalysis" (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1992) ISBN 0-201-57707-0
* "Their Eyes Meeting the World: The Drawings and Paintings of Children", edited by Margaret Sartor (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992) ISBN 0-395-61129-6
* "The Call of Service: A Witness to Idealism" (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993) ISBN 0-395-71084-7
* "The Story of Ruby Bridges", illustrated by George Ford (New York: Scholastic, 1995) ISBN 0-590-43967-7
* "Doing Documentary Work" (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) ISBN 0-19-511629-1
* "The Moral Intelligence of Children" (New York: Random House, 1997) ISBN 0-679-44811-X
* "Old and On Their Own", with photos by Alex Harris and Thomas Roma (New York: Center for Documentary Studies/Norton, 1997) ISBN 0-393-04606-0
* "The Youngest Parents: Teenage pregnancy as it shapes lives", with Robert E. Coles, Daniel A. Coles, Michael H. Coles, and photos by Jocelyn Lee and John Moses (New York: Center for Documentary Studies, 1997) ISBN 0-393-04082-8
* "The Secular Mind" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) ISBN 0-691-05805-9
* "The Erik Erikson Reader", selected and edited by Coles (New York: Norton, 2000) ISBN 0-393-04845-4
* "Lives of Moral Leadership" (New York: Random House, 2000) ISBN 0-375-50108-8
* "Growing Up Poor: A Literary Anthology", edited by Robert Coles, Randy Testa, and Michael Coles (New York: New Press, 2001) ISBN 1-56584-623-0
* "A Life in Medicine: A Literary Anthology", edited by Coles and Randy Testa (New York: New Press, 2002) ISBN 1-56584-729-6
* "When They Were Young: A photographic restrospective of childhood from the Library of Congress" (Carlsbad, California: Kales Press/Library of Congress, 2002) ISBN 0-9670076-5-8
* "Bruce Springsteen's America: The People Listening, a Poet Singing" (New York: Random House, 2003) ISBN 0-375-50559-8
* "Teaching Stories: An Anthology on the Power of Learning and Literature", selected by Coles (New York: Modern Library, 2004) ISBN 0-8129-7169-8

Further reading

* Ronda, Bruce A. "Intellect and Spirit: The Life and Work of Robert Coles". New York: Continuum, 1989.
*Woodruff, Jay, and Sarah Carew (eds.). "Conversations with Robert Coles". Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992.

References

* Keillor, Garrison. [http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2006/10/09/ "The Writer's Almanac"] . October 12, 2006.
* London, Scott. [http://www.scottlondon.com/articles/coles.html "A Way of Seeing: The Work of Robert Coles"] . "Scott London". (Retrieved October 19, 2006).

External links

* [http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/c/Coles,Robert.html Inventory of the Robert Coles Papers, 1954-1999] , in the Southern Historical Collection, UNC-Chapel Hill
* [http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/B-0002/ Oral History Interview with Robert Coles] at [http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/ Oral Histories of the American South]