Peter Bridges

Biography

Peter Bridges received degrees from Dartmouth College and Columbia University, and after two years as an Army private spent three decades as an officer of the United States Foreign Service in Washington and at American embassies in Panama, Moscow, Prague, Rome, and Mogadishu. He’s published three books: Safirka: An American Envoy (Kent State University Press, 2000), Pen of Fire: John Moncure Daniel (Kent State, 2002), and Donn Piatt: Gadfly of the Gilded Age (Kent State, 2012). His shorter work has appeared, in addition to VQR, in the Christian Science Monitor, California Literary Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notes & Records of the Royal Society of London, and elsewhere.

See Work

MEMOIR / Fall 2004

Corsica, with a Collie

By Peter Bridges

I stood with Bella in the sunny piazza in Livorno, one noon in May. My wife had gone to buy French francs; the era of the euro had not yet arrived. I noted to the collie that this was a city full of pretty girls … but what were we getting...

Winter 2003

Playwrights, Presidents, and Prague

By Peter Bridges
ESSAYS / Winter 2002

A Pen of Fire

By Peter Bridges

John Moncure Daniel was ever quick to attack what he saw as wrong. He minced no words during the seven years he spent as a top American diplomat, including a moment which may have deeply affected the history of Italy. Subsequently, Daniel...

Summer 1997

Prince Albert and King Lothar

By Peter Bridges
ESSAYS / Winter 1999

The Polymath From Vermont

By Peter Bridges

No American of any century has excelled in a greater number of diverse areas than a New Englander named George Perkins Marsh, who was born in the town of Woodstock, Vermont in 1801. Marsh is best remembered today for his pioneering book on...

Winter 2000

A Prince of Climbers

By Peter Bridges