G. Bruce Knecht

G. Bruce Knecht is a former senior writer and foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and the author of The Proving Ground as well as Hooked: Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish. After joining the Journal in 1994, he wrote about the banking industry and pursued investigative projects until 1995 when he began covering publishing—books, magazines, newspapers and the press. In 1998, the Journal nominated his articles about how advertisers and retailers influenced the editorial content of major magazines for two Pulitzer Prizes. The same stories won an award from the University of Missouri Journalism School. In 1998, Knecht moved to Hong Kong to become the Journal’s Asia Correspondent. His article about children of American servicemen who are still living in Vietnam won a Human Rights Press Award. Knecht took a leave of absence from the Journal to write The Proving Ground, which was initially published in June 2001 by Little, Brown & Company in the United States as well as publishers in several other countries. CNN produced a documentary based on the book. Hooked was published by Rodale and several overseas publishers in 2006 and is currently being developed as a documentary. He is currently at work on a book for Free Press that will describe the design and building of a very large yacht in the context of the recent economic crisis. From 1981 through 1983, Knecht was a reporter and later an assistant editor for Dun’s Review magazine. He joined the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1984 as its senior financial writer and also worked for The New York Times on a free-lance basis from 1982 to 1985. He was a summer associate at Goldman, Sachs & Company in New York in 1985, and in 1986 he became an associate at Tishman Speyer Properties. In 1987, he joined Lincoln Property Company, first as an associate and later a partner. He was a London-based free-lance writer from 1991 to 1994, focusing on business and economic topics, particularly those involving the collapse of the Soviet Union. His articles have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, The Independent (UK), National Review, Barron’s, Conde Nast Traveler, SAIL, and Men’s Journal. Born in Morristown, New Jersey, Knecht received a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University and has served on the board of directors of its alumni corporation. He earned an M.B.A. from Harvard University and was a Reuters Fellow at Oxford University. An avid sailor, Knecht raced across the Atlantic Ocean on Mari-Cha IV, the yacht that broke the 100-year-old transatlantic race record.