Award-Winning Journalists Examine Washington’s Most Private Public Figures, Oct. 30

Event: Award-winning journalists Bill Minutaglio and Alicia C. Shepard will discuss their recently published books at a lecture, “Investigating Washington’s Most Private Public Figures.” Both authors are featured speakers at the 2006 Texas Book Festival.

The lecture, sponsored by the Tarlton Law Library, the UT Law Communications Office and the Society of Professional Journalists UT Student Chapter, is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

When: 6 p.m., Monday, Oct. 30, 2006

Where: Sheffield Room, The University of Texas School of Law (Maps and directions: http://www.utexas.edu/law/about/maps.html)

Background: In their latest books, Minutaglio and Shepard have written about people – Alberto Gonzales, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein -- who are enormously private and yet by virtue of their careers became some of the most powerful, public figures in Washington and the United States.

In “The President’s Counselor, The Rise to Power of Alberto Gonzales,” Minutaglio documents the career of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is one of the most guarded, influential men in recent American history. He also is the author of “First Son: George W. Bush & the Bush Family Dynasty” and “City on Fire.” He has written for many publications including Talk, the New York Times, Outside and Details, among others. His work was featured, along with that of Ernest Hemingway, in Esquire’s list of the greatest tales of survival ever written.

In “Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate,” Shepard investigates the professional and personal lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two most famous and influential journalists of our time. She currently teaches journalism at American University and was a Times Mirror Visiting Professor at University of Texas at Austin in 2005-2006 where she taught a class she designed on Watergate and the Press. She spent the last four years interviewing more than 175 people connected to Woodward and Bernstein and sifting through the new archival materials that UT bought from Woodward and Bernstein for $5 million in 2003.

Shepard contributes to Washingtonian and People magazines, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. For nearly a decade, she wrote for American Journalism Review on such things as ethics, the newspaper industry and how journalism works - or doesn’t. For that work, the National Press Club awarded her its top media criticism prize three different years.

Contact: Laura Castro

UT Law Communications

(512) 232-1229

LCastro@law.utexas.edu