Geoffrey C. Ward
(b. 1940)

Certain teams have a special chemistry that produces great achievements. The team of Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns has that special chemistry. Ward is an American historian. Burns is a writer, director, and producer of documentaries. Their joint efforts on documentaries ranging from The Civil War in 1990 to Jazz in 2001 have won them a loyal audience of millions of public television viewers.

Geoffrey C. Ward came to American history in an indirect way. As a student at Oberlin College, he studied art and photography and founded a magazine called Contemporary Photographer. The strong visual sense and plentiful energy that helped him as a student were also useful to Ward in his first job as a picture editor at Encyclopedia Brittanica. However, picture editing required more than an excellent visual sense. It also called for good writing skills, since the editor needed to write captions to go with the pictures.

This initial exposure to writing eventually branched into a new career. Ward went from writing captions to writing picture essays in magazines to writing books. He first attracted the attention of critics and historians with a series of two books on Franklin Delano Roosevelt. These books explored aspects of the former president that were often overlooked by historians, such as Roosevelt's boyhood and his relationship with his wife Eleanor.

Though Ward has published several books on his own, he is best known for his efforts with Ken Burns. Their first project together was a documentary on Huey Long, a colorful Louisiana governor and senator who was assassinated in 1935. Ward wrote the script for the documentary, setting a pattern, which has continued for a decade and a half. After careful research to guarantee historical accuracy, Ward typically writes most of the narration for the documentaries. Ken Burns, sometimes with his brother Ric, produces and films the documentaries and contributes some writing as well.

This formula first produced a remarkable success with The Civil War in 1990. Millions of Americans were fascinated by the historical photographs, letters, and music that had been put together by the Burns brothers and Geoffrey Ward. A companion book for the documentary, with text by Ward, became a bestseller. Since 1990, Ward and Ken Burns have worked together on documentaries on baseball, Thomas Jefferson, the American West, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, feminists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and jazz. Ward's companion books for the baseball and jazz series have attracted praise for their attention to historical detail and have sold briskly.

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