Jonathan Harr

Jonathan Harr is the author of the internationally best-selling book, A Civil Action, the true story of a charismatic young lawyer who risked everything to represent several families who believe their children died from drinking water contaminated by two giant corporations. Brought to life on the big screen, the film version starred John Travolta, stunned the nation, and made Harr a household name.

Published in 1995, A Civil Action was a huge success. Subsequently nominated for a National Book Award, it was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award. Harr had spent nine years researching and writing A Civil Action from documents from the case, that were as he said, “as tall as a three-story building, if you stacked them up. In this kind of writing, you don't know what's going to happen. You're there watching the thing unfold. Maybe there's something to expose, maybe there isn't. It's hindsight when people say that it's an exposé of the legal system. It really wasn't that at all.”

Harr has directed his literary sights on the art world. His newest book, The Lost Painting, is a non-fiction account of the search for a Caravaggio painting that hasn't been seen in 200 years.

Now working in Northampton, Massachusetts, Harr has taught nonfiction writing at Smith College and is a former staff writer at New England Monthly and has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine.