Jon Margolis, author of The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964, lives in Northeastern Vermont where he combines the roles of author, columnist, adjunct professor of political science, regular panel member on VPT's Vermont This Week, gardener, trout angler, dog-walker, and woodland hiker.

Margolis left the Chicago Tribune early in 1995 after 23 years as Washington correspondent, sports writer, correspondent-at-large and general columnist. He continues to write for the Tribune, and his columns have also appeared in The New York Times, Orlando Sentinel, New York Daily News, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

For three years, Margolis wrote a monthly column for the Burlington Free-Press, and now does in-depth reporting for Seven Days, the alternative weekly in Burlington. He has contributed magazine articles to The New York Times Magazine, American Prospect, Mother Jones, and High Country News. He teaches at the University of Vermont in Burlington.

Margolis spent most of his Tribune years in the Washington Bureau as the newspaper’s chief national political correspondent. He led the Tribune’s coverage of all the Presidential elections from 1976 through 1988, and covered other major national stories, including the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon. In 1985, he was awarded the Tribune’s Edward Scott Beck Award for his coverage of the 1984 Presidential campaign. In 1988, he was a one of the journalists asking questions of Senators Lloyd Bentsen and Dan Quayle in their televised vice presidential debate.

After leaving Washington, Margolis wrote a sports column for almost two years, covering events ranging from the World Series to the Iditarod dog sled race in Alaska. He then returned to the “serious” side of the paper, writing a general column and covering stories about politics, environmental disputes and cultural trends.

Before joining the Tribune in 1973, Margolis had been the Albany Bureau Chief for Newsday. He was the first reporter on the scene of the Attica prison rebellion in 1971, and spent the entire first night inside the prisoner-held ‘D’ yard. His coverage of the Attica riot earned a prize from the Society of the Silurians, a New York journalism fraternity.

Earlier, Margolis was a reporter for the Bergen Record in Hackensack, N.J.; the Miami Herald and the Concord (N.H.) Monitor.

In addition to The Last Innocent Year, published by William Morrow in 1999 (paperback published by HarperCollins Perennial in 2000), he is the author of How To Fool Fish With Feathers: An Incompleat Guide to Fly Fishing, illustrated by Jeff MacNelly (Simon and Schuster, 1991) and The Quotable Bob Dole--Witty, Wise and Otherwise, (Avon Books, 1995). He also wrote two chapters of Howard Dean: A citizens Guide to the Man Who Would be President (Steerforth, 2003).

A native of New Jersey, Margolis graduated from Oberlin College in 1962. He served in the US Army. He is married to the former Sally Thompson and they have two grown children, a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law and a grand-daughter.