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Bryan Burrough

Bryan Burrough joined Vanity Fair in August 1992 and has been a special correspondent for the magazine since January 1995. He has reported on a wide range of topics, including the events that led to the war in Iraq, the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, and the Anthony Pellicano case. His profile subjects have included Sumner Redstone, Larry Ellison, Mike Ovitz, and Ivan Boesky.

Prior to joining Vanity Fair, Burrough was an investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal. In 1990, with Journal colleague John Heylar, he co-authored

Barbarians at the Gate

(HarperCollins), which was No. 1 on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for 39 weeks. Burrough's oth­er books include

Vendetta: American Express and the Smearing of Edmund Safra

(HarperCollins, 1992),

Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir

(HarperCollins, 1998); and

Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34

(Penguin Press, 2004).

Burrough is a three-time winner of the John Hancock Award for excellence in financial journalism. He lives in Summit, New Jersey with his wife Marla and their two sons.


“To the generations of Americans raised since World War 2, the identities of criminals such as Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, "Ma" Barker, John Dillenger, and Clyde Barrow are no more real than are Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones. After decades spent in the washing machine of popular culture, their stories have been bled of all reality, to an extent that few Americans today know who these people actually were, much less that they all rose to national prominence at the same time. They were real.”
Bryan Burrough
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