Safire, William (1929-2009), was a popular American journalist and novelist. He was best known for his weekly column on language usage in The New York Times Magazine. The column, called “On Language,” explored the origins of words and analyzed proper and incorrect language usage. From 1973 to 2005, Safire regularly wrote a political column for The New York Times that typically expressed his conservative political views. He won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.
Safire’s columns have been published in numerous collections. For example, many of his political columns were collected in Safire’s Washington (1980). Collections of his language usage columns include Let a Simile Be Your Umbrella (2001) and The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time (2004).
Safire’s first novel, Full Disclosure (1977), deals with presidential politics in Washington, D.C. Freedom (1987) is a historical novel about Abraham Lincoln. Sleeper Spy (1995) is a novel about espionage. Safire related the Biblical book of Job to modern American political life in The First Dissent: The Book of Job in Today’s Politics (1992). In 2000, Safire wrote Scandalmonger, a historical novel about political figures and journalism in the 1700’s.
William Lewis Safir was born in New York City on Dec. 17, 1929. In 1954, he legally changed the spelling of his name to Safire. After attending Syracuse University from 1947 to 1949, he went into journalism and public relations. He was the president of his own public relations firm from 1961 to 1968, when he became a speechwriter for Richard M. Nixon, the Republican presidential candidate in the 1968 election. Safire worked as a senior speechwriter for President Nixon until 1973.Safire also wrote some speeches for Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. President George W. Bush awarded Safire the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the nation’s highest civilian honors, in 2006. Safire died in Rockville, Maryland, on Sept. 27, 2009.
