Bill Geist

Bill Geist: Profile

Bill Geist is the best-selling author of six books: Fore! Play (It's about golf), The Big Five-Oh! – Fearing, Facing, and Fighting 50, Monster Trucks And Hair-In-A-Can – Who Says America Doesn't Make Anything Anymore?, Little League Confidential, City Slickers, and The Zucchini Plague and Other Tales of Suburbia. Another book, Way Off The Road, about his adventures during his 20 years of travel for CBS, was published in May 2007.

Bill Geist has written articles appearing in dozens of periodicals, ranging from New York magazine to Chicago magazine, Forbes to Rolling Stone and Vogue to Esquire.

Prior to joining CBS, Bill Geist was a reporter and columnist for The New York Times from 1980 to 1987, writing the About New York column. Before that, he was a reporter and columnist for The Chicago Tribune from 1972-1980. He served as a combat photographer with the First Infantry Division in Vietnam in 1969.

Bill Geist graduated from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) in 1968 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Communications. He received a Master's degree in Communications from the University of Missouri (Columbia) in 1971.

Bill Geist has won numerous awards for his work as a humorist, commentator, and reporter in television and newspapers, but seems most proud of finishing a close third in the Illinois State Fair Bake-Off.