Aaron Glantz

Aaron Glantz (born August 10, 1977) is an American journalist and author. Glantz works as a reporter The Bay Citizen, a non-profit news organization in San Francisco, which produces the Bay Area pages of the New York Times.

Since 2003, his work has focused on the war in Iraq and its effects on American military personnel. He also covers housing and economic issues focusing on the effects of the recession and recovery on Northern California's diverse communities.

Career

In November 2002, when the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq appeared imminent, Glantz traveled to Istanbul to cover regional reaction to the crisis. When Saddam Hussein was overthrown on April 9, 2003, Glantz traveled to Baghdad as an unembedded journalist to cover Iraqi experience of U.S. occupation. He spent parts of three years in the county, covering the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the attack on radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and the April 2004 U.S. military siege of Fallujah. He also spent considerable time reporting in the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq.

Since returning from his last visit to Iraq, Glantz has devoted considerable attention to the damaging effects of the war on American veterans focusing on the difficulties that veterans have experienced in their efforts to obtain services from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.

Before joining The Bay Citizen in October 2010, Glantz spent a year at New America Media, the ethnic media newswire, when he covered the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (better known as the stimulus). At New America Media, Glantz also administered a national fellowship program for ethnic media journalists covering the stimulus and conducted investigative journalism trainings in eight cities as partnership with Pro Publica and Investigative Reporters and Editors.

During the course of his career, Glantz has also reported internationally from Denmark, France, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and South Korea.

Awards and Fellowships

Glantz's reporting has been honored with numerous awards, including a 2010 national investigative reporting award from the Society of Professional Journalists for his coverage of veterans' suicides. He has been a Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism at the Carter Center, a DART Center Fellow for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University Journalism School, and a fellow at the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media and Columbia University Teachers College.

In 2011, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors issued a certificate of honor to Glantz for his "extraordinary efforts as a critically acclaimed author... who through word and deed is saving lives of American veterans."

Books on the Iraq War

In 2005 Aaron Glantz published his book How America Lost Iraq (Tarcher/Penguin), in which he gives a voice to the Iraqis and tells how the U.S. government squandered, through a series of blunders and brutalities, the goodwill with which most Iraqis greeted the American invasion and the elation they felt at the fall of Saddam Hussein.

In 2008 the book Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan (Haymarket) was published edited by Glantz in collaboration with Iraq Veterans Against the War. The book dovetails with the Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan event detailing allegations of military misconduct among U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

In 2009, Glantz published "The War Comes Home: Washington's Battle Against America's Veterans" (UC Press), the first book to systematically document the government's failure to care for returning soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Personal life

Glantz lives in San Francisco with his wife, journalist Ngoc Nguyen and their son. His father is Stanton Glantz, Ph.D, a leading researcher and activist on the health effects of tobacco. He is a third-generation San Franciscan.