William Honan

Early life

Honan was born in Manhattan on May 11, 1930, the son of William Francis Honan, a thoracic surgeon and Annette Neudecker Honan, a journalist. He is a brother of Park Honan, an academic and author.

He graduated from Oberlin College in 1952 with a bachelor's degree in history. In 1955 he earned a master's degree in drama from the University of Virginia. After serving in the Army, Honan moved to New York City where he managed Ed Koch's early political campaigns and began a notable career in journalism.

The Villager

Honan worked at The Villager, a downtown New York City paper, from 1957 to 1960, and is credited with turning the publication from "a little society paper" to a significant force in Manhattan politics. Serving as editor, Honan established himself as a crusading voice for reform against the Tammany Hall political machine and the automobile-centric visions of the autocratic urban planner Robert Moses.

Honan convinced the Villager's assistant publisher, Jim Bledsoe, to endorse political candidates in 1959. In a 2,500-word, full-page editorial the paper backed Reform candidates against Carmine De Sapio, the last head of the Tammany Hall machine. The editorial accused De Sapio of widespread corruption.

De Sapio ended up winning the 1959 election by a vote The Villager called in its headline a "Razor Margin." However, the paper also correctly predicted that this race was "the last hurrah" for De Sapio and the Tammany machine. De Sapio would run in and lose in the next three election cycles.

The New York Times

Honan joined the Times in 1969 as an editor at the Times Magazine. He went on to become editor of the Travel section in 1970 and editor of the Arts and Leisure section in 1974. He was promoted to daily cultural news editor in 1982 and held that job until 1988, at which point Honan was appointed chief cultural correspondent, a position that entailed "reporting on and analyzing trends in all the arts for daily and Sunday sections."

Ted Kennedy, Profile of a Survivor

Honan gained direct and continuous access to Senator Edward Kennedy during the most tumultuous time of the Senator's life. Honan published his accounts of Kennedy's life in a series of New York Times Magazine articles in advance of the 1972 presidential election, when there was widespread speculation that Kennedy would make a run for the White House.

Honan expanded upon these articles in his 1972 book, Ted Kennedy, Profile of a Survivor: Edward M. Kennedy after Bobby, after Chappaquiddick, and after three years of Nixon. The book covers Kennedy's early career in the Senate, the Chappaquiddick incident, the aftermath of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and Kennedy's anti-war speeches opposing President Richard Nixon's policy of Vietnamization.

Visions of Infamy

Visions of Infamy is a full biography of Hector Charles Bywater, the leading naval journalist of the first part of the 20th century who Honan argues was the architect of Japan's naval war against the United States in the Second World War. Bywater's 1925 book, The Great Pacific War, was a fictional account of how Japan might engage the United States in a theoretical future naval conflict and how the U.S. might respond. As Honan points out in Visions of Infamy, both Japan and the U.S. adopted strategies that were remarkably faithful to what Bywater promulgated in his fictionalized war game. Honan goes on to argue that this was much more than just a coincidence.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto familiarized himself with Bywater's works while serving two postings as Japanese naval attaché in Washington, D.C. As Honan demonstrates, Yamamoto adopted Bywater's broad strategy, which is most noticeable in Yamamoto's surprise attack against the U.S. fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Separately, U.S. naval strategists came to adopt Bywater's controversial idea of island hopping to reverse Japanese advances in the Pacific. As Bywater predicted, the U.S. strategy would ultimately bring overwhelming naval and aerial superiority to bear against the Japanese forces. This strategy, known as War Plan Orange, became the official joint policy of the United States Army and Navy in the years leading up to and during the Second World War. As Bywater predicted, this plan worked. One particularly notable example of the successful adoption of Bywater's strategy is the U.S. invasion of the Philippines in which U.S. commanders chose the very beaches to land forces on the archipelago that Bywater recommended. As Honan remarks, Bywater taught "two of the most powerful nations on Earth how to make war with each other."

Bywater was considered a relatively minor figure by military historians until Honan's book.

Treasure Hunt: A New York Times Reporter Tracks the Quedlinburg Hoard

Honan published Treasure Hunt: A New York Times Reporter Tracks the Quedlinburg Hoard in 1997. The book chronicles the story of how the "Quedlinburg Hoard" - a cache of medieval treasures valued at over $200 million - disappeared in the Harz Mountains at the end of the Second World War, only to resurface 40 years later in a small Texas town. Honan played a vital role in discovering the whereabouts of the art treasures.

In his capacity as chief cultural correspondent of the Times, Honan covered many of the controversies in the art world that involved the repatriation of artworks from war-ravaged countries and regions, many of which came to light at the end of the Cold War.

In the 1990s, many revelations surfaced about World War II-era art thefts, but few governments had the resources to launch full-scale investigations to find the lost treasures of their homelands. Honan filled this void as an investigative reporter for the Times. Over the course of many months, Honan pursued a series of leads that ultimately led him to the small Texas town of Whitewright. There Honan discovered that an American soldier of the 87th Armored Field Infantry Battalion of the U.S. Army named Lieutenant Joe T. Meador had orchestrated one of the greatest art thefts in history at the end of the Second World War. Meador's haul included a 9th-century illuminated manuscript gospel book, the "Samuhel Gospels," a printed evangeliary (book of gospel readings for services) dating to 1513 (the Evangelistar aus St. Wiperti), both with jeweled book-covers, as well as reliquaries, an ivory liturgical comb and other objects.

Honan's book, Treasure Hunt: A New York Times Reporter Tracks the Quedlinburg Hoard, recounts this detective story and serves as a chronicle of the methods of the investigative reporter.

Personal life

Honan was married twice. His first marriage was to Sally Osbourne Hammond, widow of Ashley Gordon Trope who died in a plane crash in WWII. They were married on Aug 27, 1960 in Manhattan, New York City, NY. at the Fifteenth Street Meeting House Society of Friends; marriage ended in divorce. His second marriage to Nancy Burton, an attorney and writer, lasted 37 years until his death. They lived in Redding, Connecticut. He had two sons, Bradley Honan, CEO of KRC Research, and Daniel Honan, a media entrepreneur. His daughter, Edith Honan, is Politics & General News Reporter with Reuters. Honan has two grandchildren.

Death

On April 28, 2014, Honan suffered cardiac arrest and died at Norwalk Hospital in Norwalk, Connecticut. He was 83.