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Jon Wiener | The Nation

Jon Wiener

Author Bios

Jon Wiener

Jon Wiener

Contributing Editor

Jon Wiener teaches US history at UC Irvine. His most recent book is How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey across America. He sued the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act for its files on John Lennon. With the help of the ACLU of Southern California, Wiener v. FBI went all the way to the Supreme Court before the FBI settled in 1997. That story is told in Wiener's book, Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files; some of the pages of the Lennon FBI file are posted here. The story is also told in the documentary, “The U.S. Versus John Lennon,” released in 2006.  His work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New Republic, and the Los Angeles Times. It has been translated into Japanese, German, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish and Italian.

Wiener hosts a weekly afternoon drive-time interview show on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles His guests have included Gail Collins, Jane Mayer, Joan Didion, Gore Vidal, Barbara Ehrenreich, Frank Rich, Seymour Hersh, Amos Oz, Mike Davis, Elmore Leonard, John Dean, Julian Bond, Al Franken, and Terry Gross.

Jon Wiener was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and attended Central High School there. He has a B.A. from Princeton and a Ph.D. from Harvard, where he began working as a writer in the late sixties for the underground paper The Old Mole. He lives in Los Angeles.

Articles

News and Features

It seems unbelievable, but land dedicated to the VA for housing veterans has been denied to them—and LA has more homeless vets than any city in America.

Yoko’s 80th birthday is a day to celebrate her art, music and activism.

Fifty years ago, college was cheap, unions were strong and there was no terrorism-industrial complex.

Missed opportunities, roads not taken—these are the central themes of Stone's new documentary. 

The right celebrates Reagan as the cold war “victor.” American memorials tell a different story.

Ramona Ripston, who is stepping down after forty years as the head of the ACLU of Southern California, transformed the meaning of civil liberties.

Will the Nixon Library actually portray Watergate accurately?

Letters published in the April 19, 2010 issue of The Nation.

The journal's sustained critique of neoliberalism remains indispensable.

Blogs

Our friendly frackers have forgotten about the right of citizens to petition for a redress of grievances.
The fight in LA to house homeless disabled veterans—on land donated to the government for them—has moved to the courts.
First, cut the budget so students can’t get the courses they need. Then, bring in for-profit companies.
Yoko’s 80th birthday is a day to celebrate her art, music and activism.
What business leaders can learn from Lincoln—and what they can’t.
The father of Jack and Bobby and Ted saw the world differently from his sons.
“Implausible” is too generous a word for this show.