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Biography

Thomas Bass is the author of Censorship in Vietnam: Brave New World (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017), The Spy Who Loved Us (Public Affairs, 2009; University of Massachusetts Press, 2018), The Predictors (Holt / Viking-Penguin, 1999); Vietnamerica: The War Comes Home (Soho, 1996, 1997); Reinventing the Future (Addison-Wesley, 1994, 1995); Camping with the Prince and Other Tales of Science in Africa (Houghton Mifflin, 1990; Penguin 1991; Moyer Bell, 1998); and The Eudaemonic Pie (Houghton Mifflin, 1985; Vintage, 1986; Penguin 1991; Authors Guild eBook, 2014).

Censorship in Vietnam is an investigative report on a culture in ruins and a world increasingly closing itself to free speech. "This is an eye-opening, disturbing, sad, and altogether fascinating account of censorship in contemporary Vietnam," says author Tim O’Brien. “Even more than that, Thomas Bass introduces us to a number of brave Vietnamese poets and fiction writers who have endured almost unimaginable hardships merely for expressing the humane values that most Americans take for granted."

The Spy Who Loved Us, set in Vietnam during the war, tells the story of Time correspondent and Communist spy Pham Xuan An. Serialized in The New Yorker, the book has been called a "revelation" by Morley Safer, "chilling" by Seymour Hersh, and "brilliant" by Daniel Ellsberg." Ted Koppel called it "a gripping story," and novelist John le Carré wrote, "I was deeply impressed by this book. It is relevant, instructive, funny. The shock of the double never goes away. Neither does the gullibility of the arrogant intruder."

Film rights to Bass's books have been sold to Columbia Pictures, Focus Features, the BBC, Channel 4, and other companies. His books have been named "Notable Books of the Year" by The New York Times and translated into a half dozen languages. He has appeared on Good Morning America, CNN, NPR, BBC, and other venues as a commentator. Cited by the Overseas Press Club for his foreign reporting, he is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Wired, The New York Times, Smithsonian, Discover, and other publications.

He has an A.B.(Honors) from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Blue Mountain Center, and the Ford Foundation.

He has taught literature and history at Hamilton College and the University of California at Santa Cruz and is the former director of the Hamilton in New York City Program on "Media in the Digital Age." He was a Visiting Professor at the Institut d'études politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris and the Institut de Presse et des Sciences de l'Information in Tunis and currently serves as Professor of English and Journalism at the State University of New York, University at Albany. The father of three children, Mr. Bass lives in New York.