12.17.2009
Newt Gingrich
Former Speaker of the House of RepresentativesNewt Gingrich is well-known as the architect of the “Contract with America” that led the Republican Party to victory in 1994 by capturing the majority in the U.S. House for the first time in forty years. After he was elected Speaker, he disrupted the status quo by moving power out of Washington and back to the American people. Under his leadership, Congress passed welfare reform, passed the first balanced budget in a generation and passed the first tax cut in sixteen years. In addition, the Congress restored funding to strengthen our defense and intelligence capabilities, an action later lauded by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission.
But there is a lot more to Gingrich than these remarkable achievements. As an author, Gingrich has published twenty books including 10 fiction and non-fiction New York Times best-sellers. Non-fiction books include his latest, To Try Men's Souls, 5 Principles for a Successful Life: From Our Family to Yours, which was co-authored with his daughter, Jackie Cushman Gingrich, Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less, Real Change, A Contract with the Earth, Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America, To Renew America, Lessons Learned the Hard Way, Saving Lives & Saving Money, Window of Opportunity, The Art of Transformation and Rediscovering God in America. He is also the author of these fiction books: Gettysburg, Grant Comes East, Never Call Retreat: Lee and Grant the Final Victory, 1945, Pearl Harbor, A Novel of December the 8 and his latest, Days of Infamy. All of these novels are active history studies in the lessons of warfare based on fictional accounts of historical wartime battles and their aftermaths. Gingrich and his wife, Callista, also host and produce documentaries. Recent films include Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny, We Have the Power and Rediscovering God in America. A fourth documentary, Nine Days That Changed The World, is currently in production.
Gingrich was first elected to Congress in 1978 where he served the Sixth District of Georgia for twenty years. In 1995, he was elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives where he served until 1999. The Washington Times has called him “the indispensable leader” and Time magazine, in naming him Man of the Year for 1995, said, “Leaders make things possible. Exceptional leaders make them inevitable. Newt Gingrich belongs in the category of the exceptional.”
His experiences as the son of a career soldier convinced him at an early age to dedicate his life to his country and to the protection of freedom. Realizing the importance of understanding the past in order to protect the future, he immersed himself in the study of history, receiving his Bachelor’s degree from Emory University and Master’s and Doctorate in Modern European History from Tulane University. Before his election to Congress, he taught History and Environmental Studies at West Georgia College for eight years.
Today, Gingrich is chairman of the Gingrich Group, a communications and consulting firm that specializes in transformational change, with offices in Atlanta and Washington, DC. He serves as general chairman of American Solutions for Winning the Future (www.americansolutions.com), is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California and is an honorary chairman of the NanoBusiness Alliance. Gingrich is also a news and political analyst for the Fox News Channel.
He resides in Virginia with his wife, Callista. The Gingrich family includes two daughters, two sons-in-law and two grandchildren.