Michael Lesy (born 1945) is an American non-fiction writer. His books, which combine historical photographs with original writing, include Wisconsin Death Trip (1973), Real Life: Louisville in the Twenties (1976), Bearing Witness: A Photographic Chronicle of American Life (1982), Visible Light (1985), Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties (2007), Repast: Dining Out at the Dawn of the New American Century (with Lisa Stoffer, 2013), Looking Backward: A Photographic Portrait of the World at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century (2017), and Snapshots 1971–77 (September 2021).
Lesy grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He received a B.A. in theoretical sociology from Columbia University, an M.A. in American social history from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. in American cultural history from Rutgers University. He taught at Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 1990 to 2020, and is a Hampshire emeritus professor of literary journalism.
Wisconsin Death Trip, Lesy's first book, was adapted into a film by James Marsh in 1999. Ironically, Lesy explained in a 2003 interview, "I wanted to make it a movie. But it cost too much to produce. So it was just a poor man’s way of making a movie in book form." Wisconsin Death Trip was presented on the BBC documentary series Arena in 2000.
In 2006 the United States Artists Foundation named Lesy its first Simon Fellow. In 2013 Lesy was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Photography Studies.
Bibliography
| Year | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| 1973 | Wisconsin Death Trip | Pantheon Books |
| 1976 | Real Life: Louisville in the Twenties | Pantheon Books |
| 1980 | Time Frames: The Meaning of Family Pictures | Pantheon Books |
| 1982 | Bearing Witness: A Photographic Chronicle of American Life | Pantheon Books |
| 1985 | Visible Light | Crown Publishing Group |
| 1987 | The Forbidden Zone | Farrar, Straus, and Giroux |
| 1991 | Rescues: The Lives of Heroes | Farrar, Straus, and Giroux |
| 1997 | Dreamland: America at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century | The New Press |
| 2002 | Long Time Coming: A Photographic Portrait of America, 1935-1943 | W. W. Norton & Company |
| 2005 | Angel's World: The New York Photographs of Angelo Rizzuto | W. W. Norton & Company |
| 2007 | Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties | W. W. Norton & Company |
| 2013 | Repast: Dining Out at the Dawn of the New American Century (with Lisa Stoffer) | W. W. Norton & Company |
| 2017 | Looking Backward: A Photographic Portrait of the World at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century | W. W. Norton & Company |
| 2021 | Snapshots 1971–77 (September 17 scheduled publication) | Blast Books |
References
- Michael Lesy bio at Encyclopedia.com
- Snapshots 1971–77 at Amazon
- ^ Birnbaum, Robert, Interview: Michael Lesy, Identity Theory, September 16, 2003
- ^ Hampshire College faculty page for Michael Lesy
- Holden, Stephen, "Film Review: How a Town In Wisconsin Went Mad", The New York Times, December 1, 1999
- Marcus, Greil, "A Record of Despair Born of a Single Image", The New York Times, November 28, 1999
- "Arena -Episodes by date" on Arena series website
- United States Artists Foundation (2006) "Michael Lesy
- Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for Michael Lesy, 2013