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About Judith M. Heimann

Judith M. Heimann a New Yorker by birth and a Harvard graduate in English literature comes from a family of writers mostly journalists. She has lived much of her adult life in Europe Asia and Africa as an American diplomat and diplomats wife; their two children were born abroad. She worked more than twenty years as a diplomat in Benelux countries. She speaks French Dutch and Indonesian/Malay. Heimanns three previous full-length books all nonfiction tackle disparate topics. Her best-known book The airmen and the headhunters (Harcourt Publishers 2007) was made into a Hugo award-winning TV documentary she helped write that was nominated for an Emmy. Based on Heimanns interviews of all the surviving airmen and headhunters the book relates how generous and courteous Borneo headhunters could be to helpless American airmen shot down over Borneos tribal land during the last year of World War II. Heimanns first book The most offending soul alive: Tom Harrisson and his remarkable life (University of Hawaii Press 1999; Aurum Press 2nd edition 2002) was also made into a TV documentary for the BBC presented by Sir David Attenborough. Heimanns third book Paying calls in Shangri-La: scenes from a womans life in American diplomacy (Ohio University Press 2016) was nominated for the American Academy of Diplomacys annual prize for the best book on the art of diplomacy. All four of her books have in common aside from their overturning of various accepted popular misconceptions regarding their subjects Heimanns intense focus on getting the people she interviews to think hard about their past. Inviting them to remember what they saw did and felt when they were young and the world was new she gets them to recall for her fascinating revealing and relevant stories.