Joseph Edward Persico (July 19, 1930 – August 30, 2014) was an author and American military historian. From 1974 to 1977, he was primary speechwriter to Vice PresidentNelson Rockefeller. At the time of his death, he lived in Guilderland, New York.[1]
His book Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial tells the story of the Nuremberg Trials; it was adapted for television as the docudrama Nuremberg.
After three years, he left the Navy and joined Governor W. Averell Harriman as a writer and researcher. In 1960, Persico joined the United States Information Agency working in Argentina, Brazil, and Washington as a Foreign Service Officer.
In 1977, following the end of Rockefeller's tenure, Persico published My Enemy My Brother: Men and Days of Gettysburg, an historical work of non fiction covering the American Civil War.
In 1979, he published a novel, The Spiderweb, and a further nonfiction study, Piercing the Reich: The Penetration of Nazi Germany by American Secret Agents During World War II.
Three years later he produced The Imperial Rockefeller, a biography of his former employer. This was followed by a biography of Edward R. Murrow. In 1995, he co-wrote Colin L. Powell's autobiography My American Journey.
Throughout the 1990s, Persico continued to produce historical books (Casey: From the OSS to the CIA and Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial) as well as numerous articles on American history.
In November 2001, he published Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage and in 2004, Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918, World War I and Its Violent Climax.[1]
In May 2013, he published his last book, Roosevelt's Centurions: FDR and the Commanders He Led to Victory in World War II, through Random House.
