Lukas, J Anthony

▪ 1998

      American journalist and author (b. April 25, 1933, New York, N.Y.—d. June 5, 1997, New York), wrote meticulous examinations of the societal and racial fissures in the U.S. He was known and highly regarded for his tenacity, perfectionism, and painstaking research and won a number of the country's top literature and journalism awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes. Lukas was educated at Harvard University and served on the staff of the Crimson, the campus newspaper. He graduated magna cum laude (B.A., 1955) and studied further at the Free University of Berlin. After service in the U.S. Army, he worked (1958-62) for the Baltimore (Md.) Sun and then (1962-71) for the New York Times. Lukas's first Pulitzer was awarded in 1968 for the Times article "The Two Worlds of Linda Fitzpatrick," which detailed the double life a teenage murder victim had led with her wealthy Connecticut family and—unbeknownst to that family—in the counterculture of New York City's East Village. He included her story in his book about the generation gap, Don't Shoot—We Are Your Children! (1971). His second Pulitzer was for his book Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (1985), generally considered his masterpiece. The culmination of seven years of work, it probed the effect of court-ordered school desegration on three Boston families—one upper-middle-class white, one working-class black, and one working-class Irish Catholic. Besides the Pulitzer, it won the 1985 National Book Award and the 1986 National Book Critics Circle Award. Lukas, long a sufferer from depression and in despair because of what he saw as the shortcomings of his recently finished book, Big Trouble, took his own life.

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