Barry Werth is an American author and journalist. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, GQ, the Smithsonian,[1] and the MIT Technology Review.[2] He has also served as an instructor in journalism at Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and Boston University.[1]
Werth received a Stonewall Book Award in 2002 for The Scarlet Professor, his biography of Newton Arvin, a literary critic who was publicly forced into retirement in 1960 during an anti-pornography drive by the US Post Office.[3] The book was later adapted into the documentary film The Great Pink Scare,[4] and as a 2017 opera by Eric Sawyer and Harley Erdman based on Werth's book.[5]
His book Damages is commonly used as a case study for teaching medical malpractice in law schools.[6][7]