Tom Halsted

Tom Halsted is a lecturer, columnist and author. From the 1950s to the 1980s he worked in Washington, in and out of government, on intelligence, national security and arms control issues, including SALT I and II, the Non-Proliferation Treaty and Nuclear Test Ban Treaties. He was a founder and the first Executive Director of the Arms Control Association and the Director of Public Affairs of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under President Jimmy Carter. In 1981 he moved back to his home state of Massachusetts, where he has worked for Democratic Party candidates, lectured and debated around the country, and written a monthly newspaper column on national political affairs. In 2007 he underwent 45 days of proton radiation treatment for prostate cancer. It worked.

Disregarding the assertions of a wise counselor who told him “if you say you’re working on more than one book, you’re not really working on any,” he is currently working on three: a personal history of the Cold War, a cartoon-illustrated memoir of 30 years of small boat cruising along the coasts of Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and a biography of an ancestor who served as a midshipman on the USS Constitution in the War of 1812 and later became a pioneer in the infant textile and railroad industries. Tom lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts with his wife Joy, an artist.