C. D. B. Bryan

Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Bryan (April 22, 1936 – December 15, 2009), better known as C. D. B. Bryan, was an American author and journalist.

He was born on April 22, 1936 in Manhattan, New York City. Bryan attended Berkshire School in the class of 1954 and earned a Bachelor of Arts at Yale University in 1958, where he wrote for campus humor magazine The Yale Record. His parents were Joseph Bryan III and Katharine Barnes Bryan; after they divorced his mother married author John O'Hara.

He served in the U.S. Army in South Korea (1958–1960), but not happily. He was mobilized again (1961–1962) for the Berlin Crisis of 1961. He was an intelligence officer.

He was editor of the satirical Monocle (from 1961 until 1965), Colorado State University writer-in-residence (winter 1967), visiting lecturer University of Iowa writers workshop (1967–1969), special editorial consultant at Yale (1970), visiting professor University of Wyoming (1975), adjunct professor Columbia University (1976), fiction director at the New York City Writers Community from (1977), lecturer in English University of Virginia (spring 1983), and Bard Center fellow Bard College (spring 1984).

His first novel, P. S. Wilkinson, won the Harper Prize in 1965.

Bryan is best known for his non-fiction book Friendly Fire (1976). It began as an idea he sold to William Shawn for an article in The New Yorker, then grew into a series of articles, and then a book. It describes an Iowa farm family, Gene and Peg Mullen, and their reaction and change of heart after their son's accidental death by friendly fire in the Vietnam War. One of the real-life characters featured in the book was future Operation Desert Storm commander H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

It was made into an Emmy-winning 1979 television movie of the same name, for which he shared a Peabody Award. It's also been cited in professional military studies.

Bryan died from cancer on December 15, 2009 at his home in Guilford, Connecticut.

• So Much Unfairness of Things (short story; Literary Guild selection), Harper (New York City), 1965.
• The Great Dethriffe (novel), Dutton (New York City), 1970.
• Friendly Fire (nonfiction; Book-of-the-Month Club selected alternate), Putnam (New York City), 1976.
• The National Air and Space Museum (nonfiction; Book- of-the-Month Club selected alternate), art by David Larkin, photographs by Michael Freeman, Robert Golden, and Dennis Rolfe, Abrams (New York City), 1979, second edition with photographs by Jonathan Wallen, 1988.
• Beautiful Women; Ugly Scenes (novel; Literary Guild alternate), Doubleday (New York City), 1983.
• The National Geographic Society: 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery, Abrams, 1987, 1997.
• (Author of introduction) In the Eye of Desert Storm: Photographers of the Gulf War, Abrams, 1991.
• Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abduction, UFOs and the Conference at M.I.T.; Alfred A. Knopf, 1995; ISBN 0-679-42975-1, 1996
• Also author of narration for the Swedish film The Face of War, 1963.
• Contributor to New York Times Magazine, New York Times Book Review, Harper's, Esquire, Saturday Review, The New Yorker, and other periodicals.