T. D. Allman

T. D. Allman (born 1944) is an American historian and freelance journalist known for his exposés of the CIA's secret involvement in the war in Laos, his interviews with world figures including Yasser Arafat, Helmut Kohl, Boris Yeltsin, Manuel Antonio Noriega, as foreign correspondent for the magazine, Vanity Fair and as an author of a historical accounts of Florida.

Life

Allman is a Harvard University graduate (1966) and was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal. His first book, Unmanifest Destiny, which grew out of his doctoral thesis at Oxford University, dealt with many of the problems of American nationalism that still affect U.S. foreign policy.

Another of his books on foreign policy added the phrase "Rogue State" to foreign policy discourse.

Writing

Allman's writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Esquire, The New Republic, Rolling Stone,, National Geographic, as well as in The Guardian, Le Monde, The Economist. He's also left lengthy comments on the comment board of WNYC lamenting the dismissal of a host accused of sexual harassment.

He is credited with the coining of the phrase "secret war". He rescued massacre victims in Cambodia, which led to his work being banned from The Washington Post. Later, as a contributing editor of Harper's, he aroused further controversy when he predicted that the U.S. defeat in Indochina had opened the door to a new epoch of Pacific Rim success for American values and economic systems. He also rebutted claims that the Earth was running out of oil and predicted that U.S. cities, far from being doomed, were on the verge of a "Yuppie renaissance". His reports from Iraq and on the Colombian drug wars received wide attention, as have his profiles of figures such as Dick Cheney.

Allman's first book on Florida, "Miami: City of the Future" is considered the definitive work in its field. His history of Florida, Finding Florida: The True History of the Sunshine State, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and named one of the best works of history and non-fiction by Kirkus Reviews. The Florida Association of Authors and Publishers honored it as both the best overall book on Florida, 2013-2014, and the best book in the non-fiction for adults category.

Papers

Harvard University's Houghton Library is the repository of the T.D. Allman archive. The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College also hold some of his papers. The T.D. Allman Studentships, funded by the ChengZhong Focus Foundation, support ground-breaking independent research into past and present events.

Works

As author

• Anatomy of a coup, Glad Day Press, 1970
• Unmanifest Destiny: Mayhem and Illusion in American foreign policy--from the Monroe doctrine to Reagan's war in El Salvador. Dial Press. 1984. ISBN 978-0-385-27464-7.
• Miami: City of the Future. Atlantic Monthly Press. 1987. ISBN 978-0-87113-102-7.
• Rogue State: America at War with the World. Nation Books. 2004. ISBN 978-1-56025-562-8.
• Finding Florida The True History of the Sunshine State (First ed.). New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. 2013. ISBN 978-0-8021-2076-2.

As co-author or contributor

• Lucy McCauley, ed. (2002). "The King Who Saved His Country". Spain: True Stories. Travelers' Tales. ISBN 978-1-885211-78-1.
• David Wallis (ed), Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot to Print, Nation Books, 2004, ISBN 978-1-56025-581-9
• John Leonard (ed), These United States: Original Essays by Leading American Writers on Their State Within the Union, Nation Books, 2004, ISBN 978-1-56025-618-2
• "Cambodia: The Widening War in Indochina"
• "Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1968-1973"
• "Conservatism as Heresy: In Defence of Monarchy"
• "Provence: An Inspired Anthology"
• "The Florida Reader: Visions of Paradise"
• "Why Bosnia?"
• "Miami, the America Crossroad: A Centennial Journey"
• "Busted: Stone Cowboys, Narco-Lords and Washington’s War on Drugs"
• "Marguerite Yourcenar and the USA: From Prophecy to Protest"

In French

• "Un Destin Ambigu"
• "La Floride : Cœur révélateur des Etats Unis"

In Spanish

• "Miami: La Ciudad del Futuro"
• "El Hombre Mas Peligroso del Mundo"

External links

• "Timothy D. Allman Papers, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections"