| William A. Henry III | |
| Birth Name: | William Alfred Henry |
| Birth Date: | 24 January 1950 |
| Birth Place: | South Orange, New Jersey, US |
| Death Place: | Maidenhead, Berkshire, England |
| Education: | Yale University (BA) |
William Alfred Henry III (Janury 24, 1950 – June 28, 1994) was an American cultural critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning author.[1] [2]
Henry lived in North Plainfield, New Jersey as a young man. He graduated from Yale in 1971 and began his career in journalism in Boston, writing for the Boston Globe. His coverage of school desegregation in Boston won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975. He also wrote on the arts for the Globe, winning a second Pulitzer for his television criticism in 1980.[3]
In the 1980s he worked as an arts critic for Time magazine, while pursuing his interests in cultural criticism and in American politics. Among his articles for Time was a story critical of the Hollywood trade newspapers in their cozy relationship in an industry town.[4] In 1984, he wrote Visions of America, an account of the American presidential campaign of that year. His 1990 video documentary of Bob Fosse, Steam Heat, won an Emmy. He also wrote a 1992 biography of Jackie Gleason, The Great One.[5] [6]
His final book was In Defense of Elitism, a work of social and cultural criticism that argued that societies and cultures might be ranked on a spectrum ranging from 'egalitarianism' to 'elitism', and that the contemporary United States had moved too far away from the latter; a view he defended with reference to college education, multiculturalism, and other topics. He died of a heart attack on June 28, 1994, while the book was coming to press.[7]