Anthony Shadid was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on September 26, 1968. He received a bachelor's degree in political science and journalism from the University of Wisconsin in 1990. He worked at several newspapers during his lifetime including The Associated Press, The Globe, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. In 2010, he and three other New York Times journalists were kidnapped in Libya by Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi's forces. They were held for six days and beaten before being released. He won Pulitzer Prizes in 2004 and 2010 for work he did while at The Washington Post. The New York Times nominated him, along with a team of his colleagues, for the 2012 Pulitzer in… international reporting. He also was the author of Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats and the New Politics of Islam; Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War; and House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East. He died from an asthma attack on February 16, 2012 at the age of 43.