Andrew Nagorski Biography

Andrew Nagorski

Andrew Nagorski, currently senior editor of Newsweek International returned to New York as a senior editor in January 2000, after serving as a foreign correspondent in several postings, most recently in Berlin. In his new job, Nagorski is developing the editorial cooperation between Newsweek International and its expanding network of foreign language editions and other joint venture partners. The most recent additions have been Newsweek Russia, which was launched in June, 2004, and Newsweek Polska, which has become Poland’s leading newsmagazine since it was launched in September, 2001. Nagorski also continues to write reviews and commentaries for Newsweek International. He has been honored three times by the Overseas Press Club for his reporting.
 
As Berlin bureau chief from 1996 to 1999, Nagorski provided in-depth reporting about Germany's efforts to overcome the legacy of division, the immigration debate, and German-Jewish relations. From Berlin, Nagorski also covered Central Europe, taking advantage of his long experience in the region and his knowledge of Polish, Russian, German and French.
 
From 1990 to 1994, he served as Newsweek’s Warsaw bureau chief, and he has served two tours of duty as Newsweek’s Moscow bureau chief, first in the early 1980s and then from 1995 to 1996. In 1982, he gained international notoriety when the Soviet government, angry about his enterprising reporting, expelled him from the country. After spending the next two and a half years as Rome bureau chief, he became Bonn bureau chief.
 
From 1978 to 1980, Nagorski was the Hong Kong-based Asian regional editor for Newsweek International and then as Hong Kong Bureau Chief. After joining Newsweek International in 1973 as an associate editor, he was its assistant managing editor from 1977 to 1978.
 
In 1988, Nagorski took a one-year leave of absence to serve as a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. In recent years, he has also served as an adjunct professor at Bard College’s Center for Globalization and International Affairs, teaching a course on international affairs writing.
 
Nagorski is the author of the non-fiction books: “Reluctant Farewell: An American Reporter’s Candid Look Inside the Soviet Union” (New Republic/Henry Holt, 1985) and “The Birth of Freedom: Shaping Lives and Societies in the New Eastern Europe” (Simon & Schuster, 1993). His first novel, “Last Stop Vienna,” (Simon & Schuster, 2003) about a young German who joins the early Nazi movement and then is propelled into a confrontation with Hitler, published by Simon & Schuster in 2003, was on the Washington Post’s bestseller list. His latest non-fiction book is “The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II” (Simon & Schuster, 2007). The New York Review of Books described it as “a new and beautifully researched account of what had been a poorly understood part of the war.”
 
Nagorski taught social studies at Wayland High School in Massachusetts before joining Newsweek. Born in Edinburgh of Polish parents (who shortly after his birth emigrated to the United States), he attended school overseas while his father was in the U.S. foreign service. He earned a B.A. magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College in 1969 and studied at the University of Cracow.
 
Nagorski and his wife, Christina, have four children: Eva, Sonia, Adam and Alex.