Steve Inskeep
Steve Inskeep is a host of NPR's Morning Edition, as well as NPR's morning news podcast Up First.
Known for interviews with presidents and Congressional leaders, Inskeep has a passion for stories of the less famous: Pennsylvania truck drivers, Kentucky coal miners, U.S.-Mexico border detainees, Yemeni refugees, California firefighters, American soldiers.
Since joining Morning Edition in 2004, Inskeep has hosted the program from New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, Cairo, and Beijing; investigated Iraqi police in Baghdad; and received a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for "The Price of African Oil," on conflict in Nigeria. He has taken listeners on a 2,428-mile journey along the U.S.-Mexico border, and 2,700 miles across North Africa. He is a repeat visitor to Iran and has covered wars in Syria and Yemen.
Inskeep says Morning Edition works to "slow down the news," making sense of fast-moving events. A prime example came during the 2008 Presidential campaign, when Inskeep and NPR's Michele Norris conducted "The York Project," groundbreaking conversations about race, which received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for excellence.
Inskeep was hired by NPR in 1996. His first full-time assignment was the 1996 presidential primary in New Hampshire. He went on to cover the Pentagon, the Senate, and the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he covered the war in Afghanistan, turmoil in Pakistan, and the war in Iraq. In 2003, he received a National Headliner Award for investigating a military raid gone wrong in Afghanistan. He has twice been part of NPR News teams awarded the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for coverage of Iraq.
On days of bad news, Inskeep is inspired by the Langston Hughes book, Laughing to Keep From Crying. Of hosting Morning Edition during the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession, he told Nuvo magazine when "the whole world seemed to be falling apart, it was especially important for me ... to be amused, even if I had to be cynically amused, about the things that were going wrong. Laughter is a sign that you're not defeated."
Inskeep is the author of Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi, a 2011 book on one of the world's great megacities. He is also author of Jacksonland, a history of President Andrew Jackson's long-running conflict with John Ross, a Cherokee chief who resisted the removal of Indians from the eastern United States in the 1830s.
He has been a guest on numerous TV programs including ABC's This Week, NBC's Meet the Press, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports, CNN's Inside Politics and the PBS Newshour. He has written for publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic.
A native of Carmel, Indiana, Inskeep is a graduate of Morehead State University in Kentucky.
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Charles Frazier was done writing about the Civil War after his award-winning novel Cold Mountain. Then he discovered the true story of the first lady of the Confederacy.
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The Pulitzer Prize-winning author's new children's book follows Lola, a young Dominican-American who is "haunted by the fact that she was born on an island that she can't remember," Díaz says.
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In The Line Becomes a River, Francisco Cantú looks back on his time as a Border Patrol agent. He says, in his experience, "No matter what obstacle we put at the border, it's going to be subverted."
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History hasn't been kind to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who tried to head off war by appeasing Adolf Hitler. But Robert Harris' new novel Munich asks readers to reconsider Chamberlain.
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The Gold Star father who made headlines last year after he spoke at the Democratic National Convention has a new memoir, An American Family, about growing up in Pakistan and coming to America.
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In his new book, journalist Tom Ricks explains how the conservative British politician and the leftist author of 1984 challenged their respective political parties.
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Salt Houses traces several generations of a displaced Palestinian family. Author Hala Alyan says she experienced firsthand the "intergenerational trauma that went along with losing a homeland."
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The Osage tribe in Oklahoma became spectacularly wealthy in the early 1900s — and then members started turning up dead. David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon describes the dark plot against them.
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In the 1840s, two British crews vanished while seeking a passage through the ice at the top of the world. Paul Watson became "obsessed with the mystery" and tells the story in his new book Ice Ghosts.
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American journalist Suki Kim spent six months teaching English at a North Korean University that serves the sons of the elite. She chronicles her experience in a new book, Without You, There Is No Us.