Richard Norton Smith

Richard Norton Smith (born Leominster, Massachusetts in 1953- ) is an American speechwriter and historian. "“There’s no excuse for a dull book, a dull museum, or a dull speech,”" says Richard Norton Smith. “Especially when dealing with history – the most fascinating subject I know.” His unstuffy approach to the past, combined with his trademark humor, flavors the commentary he provides regularly on C-SPAN and The Newshour With Jim Lehrer.

Born in Leominster, Massachusetts in 1953, Mr. Smith graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1975 with a degree in government. Following graduation he worked as a White House intern and as a free lance writer for The Washington Post. After being employed as a speech writer for Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke, he went to work for Senator Bob Dole, with whom he has collaborated on numerous projects over the years.

Mr. Smith’s first major book, Thomas E. Dewey and His Times, was a finalist for the 1983 Pulitzer Prize. He has also written An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover (1984), The Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a Nation (1986) and Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation (1993). In June 1997, Houghton Mifflin published Mr. Smith’s The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, which received the prestigious Goldsmith Prize awarded by Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School, and has been described by Hilton Kramer as “the best book ever written about the press.” Currently Mr. Smith is at work on a biography of Nelson Rockefeller, a massive project involving thousands of pages of newly available documents, as well as more than 150 interviews with Rockefeller associates.

Between 1987 and 2001, Mr. Smith served as Director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa; the Dwight D. Eisenhower Center in Abilene, Kansas; the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and the Reagan Center for Public Affairs in Simi Valley, California; and the Gerald R. Ford Museum and Library in Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor, Michigan respectively.

At each of the libraries he contributed to significantly higher public visitation through major temporary exhibits, imaginative public programs, and educational outreach efforts. In addition to expanding and renovating the Hoover Library, Mr. Smith overhauled the permanent exhibitions at Hoover, Reagan and Ford. In 1990 he organized the Eisenhower Centennial on behalf of the National Archives.

In 2001 Mr. Smith became director of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas, where he supervised construction of the Institute’s landmark home and launched several high profile programs. In October, 2003 he was appointed Founding Director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, in Springfield, Illinois. In two and a half years he turned around the troubled project, which has since received international acclaim for its innovative approach to history. During this same period, Mr. Smith also served as Executive Director of a revitalized Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation, which doubled its endowment under his leadership.

Mr. Smith is presently a Scholar in Residence at George Mason University in suburban Washington, D.C.

Books by Richard Norton Smith (Partial List)

*"Thomas E. Dewey and His Times". Simon & Schuster, 1982.
*"Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover". High Plains Publishing, 1990.
*"Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation". Mariner Books, 1997.
*"The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick". Northwestern University Press, 2003.

External links

* [http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/smith-bio.html Richard Norton Smith biography] at [http://www.Whitehouse.gov Whitehouse.gov]
* [http://www.whitehouse.gov/ask/images/smith-100.jpgPhoto of Richard Norton Smith]
* [http://www.gvsu.edu/hauenstein/index.cfm?id=CDD231F2-C581-1333-7D6689E06D1C7687 Richard Norton Smith Presidential Lecture Series]
* [http://www.booktv.org/booknotes/index.asp?segid=7612&schedID=468 Booknotes interview with Brian Lamb] at [http://BookTV.org BookTV.org]
* [http://www.booknotes.org/Program/?ProgramID=1137 Watch the Booknotes interview in streaming video]
* [http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1137 Read the transcript of the Booknotes interview]