Ben Sherwood is a bestselling author, award-winning journalist and Internet entrepreneur.
Sherwood’s latest book, The Survivors Club, is a non-fiction exploration of the science and secrets of who bounces back from everyday adversity and who doesn’t; who beats life-threatening disease and who succumbs; and who triumphs after economic hardship and who surrenders. The book became an instant New York Times bestseller and has been featured widely in print and on television.
In January 2009, Sherwood founded TheSurvivorsClub.org, an online resource center and support network for people surviving and thriving in the face of all kinds of adversity. In September 2010, The Survivors Club relaunched in partnership with Hearst Digital Media.
From 2004 to 2006, Sherwood worked as executive producer of ABC’s Good Morning America during the two most successful seasons in the program’s history. Sherwood guided prize-winning coverage of the tsunami in Southeast Asia, the devastation of hurricane Katrina, and the presidential election of 2004
From 1997 to 2001, he served as senior broadcast producer, senior producer and broadcast producer of NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw in New York.
From 1989 to 1993, he worked as an investigative producer and associate producer at ABC News PrimeTime Live with Diane Sawyer and Sam Donaldson based in New York and later Washington, DC.
>SUDDEN DEATH
After the sudden death of his father in 1993, Sherwood moved home to California and took a sabbatical from the news business, working as deputy policy director and later issues director for an unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign.
Over the years, Sherwood’s journalism and essays have been published in many places including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, New Republic, Washington Monthly, Parade and O magazine.
Sherwood is also the author of two critically acclaimed best-selling novels: The Man Who Ate the 747 (2000) and The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud (2004). Sherwood’s fiction has been published around the world in 15 languages. In 1996, he published his first novel Red Mercury, a techno-thriller, under the pseudonym Max Barclay.
In July 2010, The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud was adapted as a feature film starring Zac Efron and released by Universal Pictures under the title “Charlie St. Cloud.” The Man Who Ate the 747 is also being developed as a major motion picture and Broadway musical.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard College, Sherwood earned an AB degree in American government and history. A Rhodes Scholar at Magdalen College Oxford from 1986 to 1989, Sherwood earned masters degrees in British imperial history and development economics.