Clay Blair
Clay Drewry Blair Jr. (May 1, 1925 – December 16, 1998) was an American journalist and author, best known for his books on military history. Blair wrote some two dozen history books and hundreds of magazine articles that reached a popular audience. Early life and military service Blair was born in Lexington, Virginia. Blair enlisted in the United States Navy in 1943, during World War II. Around 1944, he attended Basic Enlisted Submarine School followed by Quartermaster Class A School, after which he was assigned to Sperry (AS-12), a submarine tender. During 1945, Blair was posted to the fleet submarine Guardfish (SS-217). He was on that boat's last two war patrols off Japan. Blair served on Guardfish into 1946, after the war was over, then was discharged from the Navy. His highest rank was Quartermaster 2nd Class. Education and journalism career Blair attended both Tulane University and Columbia University. He attended the first as a prospective architecture student, but decided instead to go to New York and attend the Columbia School of Journalism. In the end, he did not graduate from either institutions. Blair later wrote for Time and Life magazines. At Time-Life during the 1950s he covered the Pentagon, focusing on issues of national security and nuclear weapons policy. Over the years, Blair worked for the Curtis Publishing Company as both a correspondent and an editor. In particular, he became editor-in-chief of The Saturday Evening Post during the early 1960s. During his stint there, he made an emphasis of publishing exclusive reports but also faced a series of libel suits, at least one of which was successful. Beginning in 1962, Blair was also in editorial charge of all of Curtis Publishing's other magazines in addition to the Post, and held the titles of executive vice president and directory. He departed Curtis Publishing in 1964 during a struggle for control of the company. Following that, he became a full-time freelance writer. He lived in Wisconsin but often travelled to various locations to research materials for his books. He was for many years married to Joan Blair, who co-wrote some of his books. Prior to that marriage he was married to Agnes Kemp Devereux Blair, with whom he had seven children. That marriage resulted in a divorce. Historian One of Blair's first books, The Hydrogen Bomb: The Men, The Menace, The Mechanism (1954), was co-written with Times Washington bureau chief, James R. Shepley, and provoked considerable controversy at the time with its charges that the U.S. development of the hydrogen bomb had been intentionally delayed by some scientists led by J. Robert Oppenheimer and that the Los Alamos Laboratory had been infiltrated by Communists. While the book was positively reviewed across a large number of newspapers and magazines at the time of publication, several scientists who had worked at Los Alamos on the bomb's development soon issued statements refuting its narrative. Interviews conducted during the mid-to-late-1950s (but not published until many decades later) showed almost no scientists speaking well of the