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Backstory: A Video Discussion with Gerald Posner – Investigative Journalist & Author

Backstory:  A Video Discussion with Gerald Posner – Investigative Journalist & Author

 

INTRODUCTION: 1:58 min.




Introduction to Gerald Posner.  Interview:  Raymond Elman.  Videography:  Manuel Perez-Trujillo.  Music:  Billy Torrello, America vs. Ivan Drago.  Recorded:  3/8/2016, Miami Beach Urban Studios-FIU.

 

GERALD POSNER (B. 1954), a resident of Miami Beach, is an investigative journalist and the best-selling author of 13 books, including Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (1993), Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998), Miami Babylon, the history of the rise, the fall, and the resurrection of Miami and Miami Beach (2009), Why America Slept, which discusses the conspiracy of the al-Qaeda terrorists (and possibly Saudi royals) who were responsible for the September 11th attacks, God’s Bankers (2015), a 200-year history of Vatican finances and the Vatican Bank, and most recently, Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America (2020).

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Posner was born in San Francisco, the only child of a Jewish father and Catholic mother. His father was an official in the Marine Cooks and Stewarts Union.

Posner was raised Catholic. He was educated at St. Ignatius College Preparatory and graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley in 1975. In 1978, he earned his J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where he served as the associate executive editor for the university’s Law Review.

At age 23, he joined the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore. In 1980, he went into private practice with a partner.  One of his cases involved suing the German government on behalf of a victim of the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp doctor, Josef Mengele.  The unsuccessful law suit left Posner with a ton of research materials about Mengele.  Posner left the law in 1986, when his first book, about Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele’s life on the run, was published by McGraw Hill.

Posner is married to author Trisha Posner, who also does research and editing for all of Gerald’s books.  Gerald is currently researching a book about Big Pharma, and Trisha is working on a book with a working title of The Pharmacist of Auschwitz.

We interviewed Gerald at FIU’s Miami Beach Urban Studios.  The videos below are organized by success factors and run between 30 seconds and 9 minutes. Tap on any video. You must be connected to the Internet to view the videos.

 

SERENDIPITY: 4:16 min.




What was your earliest awareness of art of any discipline?

 

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION:  4:27 min.




What was the influence of Catholicism on your writing?

 

CRITICAL THINKING: 2:18 min.




What are your thoughts about Pope Francis?

 

VALUES LEARNING DISCIPLINE: 2:54 min.




What did you learn in school that helped prepare you to be a writer?

 

DEVELOPING A VOICE: 2:40 min.




In law school they teach you to write dense, all-inclusive “legalese.”  How did you develop your crisp communicative style of writing?

 

SERENDIPITY: 1:10 sec.




Did you model your writing style after other authors you admired?

 

SERENDIPITY: 5:51 min.




How did your first book on the notorious Josef Mengele come about?

 

SEIZES OPPORTUNITIES: 1:20 min.




Did you change careers after the Mengele book was published?

 

OPEN TO CHANGE: 2:34 min.




What is the biggest lesson you learned from the Mengele book?

 

KNOW THYSELF:  3:41 min.




Do you feel the compulsion or pressure to put yourself in harms way?

 

SELF-CONFIDENCE:  5:36 min.




You wrote “Case Closed” about the assassination of JFK. Did you read Norman Mailer’s book, “Oswald’s Tale” first? 

 

COLLABORATION:  1:24 min.




Please describe how you and your wife Trisha collaborate on books.

 

OVERCOMES CHALLENGES TO SUCCEED:  1:31 min.




Describe a difficult challenge with a successful outcome.

 

SELF-DISCIPLINE:  1:42 min.




How does your exhaustive research and writing process differ from writing a dissertation for a PhD?