Thomas Maier is the author of several books, an Emmy-winning television producer, and a longtime Newsday investigative reporter. In 2022, he won the Columbia University Journalism School Award for career achievement. America in our times is the backdrop for his biographies, which have been singled out by critics for best-of-the-year honors. His book "Mafia Spies" shows how the CIA recruited two gangsters to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro during the Cold War. In a starred review, Booklist called it "brilliant" and "enormous fun" and "standout" among non-fiction spy books. It's being developed by Paramount for a future TV series.
Since 1984, he's been a writer for Newsday in New York, previously working at the Chicago Sun-Times. In 2002, he won the world's top $20,000 investigative prize from the International Consortium of Investigative Reporting, now called the "Daniel Pearl Award", for a series about the deadly exploitation of immigrant workers. Other investigative series have won the national Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award (twice, 1987 and 2013), the national Worth Bingham Award, National Headliners Award, New York Deadline Club, Society of Silurians and many others. He earned a master's degree in 1982 from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he won the John Patterson television documentary prize at graduation and was later awarded a John McCloy fellowship to Europe.