Jay Robert Nash
Jay Robert Nash is one of the world's foremost historians and encyclopedists. He has authored more than seventy single-volume trade and multi-volume reference works, many of which have become standards in their fields. He is the only author to receive four Best Reference citations from the American Library Association. The ALA's Best Reference citations were awarded for Nash's single-volume trade reference works, Bloodletters and Badmen: A Narrative Encyclopedia of American Criminals from the Pilgrims to the Present (more than two million copies sold to date) and Darkest Hours: A Narrative Encyclopedia of Worldwide Disasters from Ancient Times to the Present. Nash received two Best Reference citations from the ALA for the definitive multi-volume film encyclopedia, The Motion Picture Guide. Nash is also the recipient of the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his multi-volume Encyclopedia of World Crime.
Nash, who served in U.S. intelligence, has been a newspaper and magazine reporter, editor, syndicated columnist and publisher. He was editor and publisher of The Literary Times; editor-in-chief of ChicagoLand Magazine, Chicago's first city magazine; editor and publisher of CrimeFacts. His syndicated columns, On Crime and Crime Journal, appeared in dozens of U.S. newspapers during the 1970s-1990s, including the Chicago Daily News, the Philadelphia Enquirer, and the San Jose Mercury News, syndicated by King Features. He was the editor and publisher of several reference publishing firms, including CineBooks, Inc., CrimeBooks, Inc., and (presently) History, Inc.
Through his highly-productive career — resulting in more than 50 million words in print under his byline — Nash interviewed and befriended some of the world's most fascinating persons, including film directors Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, and John Huston; writers Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Ben Hecht, James T. Farrell, and Jack Conroy; photographers Edward Steichen and Yousuf Karsh; artists Jasper Johns and Eddie Balchowski; and those of darker pursuits such as the celebrated con man, Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil and notorious bank robber Willie "The Actor" Sutton. These and hundreds more were later profiled in Nash's many books.
With a long-established, dedicated staff of research and technical experts, Nash has developed comprehensive reference archives (500,000 books, 3 million text files, more than 5 million historical images) on all worldwide persons, places, things and events throughout history. His own information network of impeccable reference sources is worldwide and has been carefully developed over several decades.
Nash is married to Chicago attorney Judith Anne [Anetsberger] Nash and has three children — Lee, Andrea and Jay Robert Nash IV.
Present works include The Encyclopedia of Civil War Battles, CRIA, LLC (Commercial Research Image Archives), and AIRS (the Academic Image Research Service), wherein his vast and unique historical images will be offered on subscription and for single image, royalty-free licensing online.
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