Thomas Edwin "Tom" Ricks is an American journalist who writes on defense topics. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. He writes a blog at ForeignPolicy.com and is a member of the Center for a New American Security, a defense policy think tank. He lectures widely to the military and is a member of Harvard University's Senior Advisory Council on the Project on U.S. Civil-Military Relations. He has reported on military activities in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Ricks is author of five books: the bestselling Fiasco: The American Military Adventure In Iraq, its follow-up The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, the novel A Soldier's Duty, and Making the Corps. [More at Wikipedia]

September 25th, 1955 in Beverly (Age 69)