Curt Smith is an acclaimed columnist, award-winning radio commenator and host, and author, his current book Mercy! A Celebration of Fenway Park's Centennial Told Through Red Sox Radio and TV. He wrote more speeches than anyone for former President George H.W. Bush. The New York Times terms his work "the high point of Bush familial eloquence." Says commentator Juan Williams: "Curt Smith is a terrific talent."

From 2002 to 2012, Smith has hosted the weekly National Public Radio affiliate series Perspectives, now on temporary hiatus, over Rochester, New York's National Public Radio affiliates WXXI 1370 AM and WXXX 91.5 FM. It has featured well-known local and national guests including Fred Barnes, David Birney, Christine Brennan, Tucker Carlson, Lynne Cheney, Tom DeFrank, Dick Enberg, Garth Fagan, Emeril Lagasse, Michelle Malkin, David Maraniss, George Mitchell, Dan Rather, Williams, and John Zogby. Associated Press and the New York Broadcasting Association have voted Smith's WXXI commentary "the best in New York State."

Smith is also a columnist for Jewish World Review's PoliticalMavens.com, Major League Baseball's official web site MLBlog.com, and GateHouse Media, distributed to more than 80 papers around the country. In addition, he analyzes politics for Rochester, New York's CBS and TIME-Warner TV affiliates, appears frequently on radio's syndicated Beyond the Beltway, and is Senior Lecturer of English at the University of English, teaching Public Speaking and Presidential Rhetoric from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama..

Smist is the author of 15 books, including 2012's Mercy! A Celebration of Fenway Park's Centennial Told Through Red Sox Radio and TV. His other books are: A Talk in the Park; Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story; The Voice: Mel Allen's Untold Story; Voices of Summer; What Baseball Means To Me; Storied Stadiums; Our House; WIndows on the White House; Of Mikes and Men; The Storytellers; A Fine Sense of the Ridiculous; Voices of The Game; Long Time Gone; and America's Dizzy Dean. Recent book essays include the Memoir As Art, 32 Greatest Presidential Speeches, 32 Greatest TV/film Presidential Portrayals, 1959 White Sox, 1960 Pirates, and 1969 Mets. His essay on the media keynoted Cambridge University's The Cambridge Companion to Baseball.

Raised in Upstate New York, Smith was a Gannett reporter, speechwriter for former Texas Governor and Secretary of the Navy and Treasury John B. Connally, and The Saturday Evening Post senior editor before joining the Bush White House in 1989. He wrote the 41st president's "Just War" Persian Gulf address, Nixon and Reagan Libraries dedication, Margaret Thatcher Medal of Freedom address, and speech aboard the USS Missouri on Pearl Harbor's 50th anniversary. Smith also wrote Bush's moving 2004 eulogy to Ronald Reagan at Washington's National Cathedral.

Leaving the White House in 1993, Smith headed the former president's spech staff. He has keynoted the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture and the Great Fenway Park Writers Series, hosted Smithsonian Institution and XM Satellite Radio Baseball Hall of Fame series, and helped write ABC/ESPN's SportsCentury and ESPN's Voices of The Game. The latter title has now become shorthand for baseball radio/television.

Smith has written for, among other publications, the Boston Globe, Newsweek, the New York Times, Reader's Digest, Sports Illustrated, and The Washington Post -- and appeared on such network radio/TV programs as ABC's Nightline; Armed Forces Radio; the British Broadcasting Corporation; CBS This Morning; CNN, ESPN, and MSNBC TV; Fox News Channel; History Channel; Mutual Radio's Larry King and Jim Bohannonn; and Radio America.

The State University of New York at Geneseo alumnus has been named among the SUNY system's "100 Outstanding Alumni." He is a member of the Judson Welliver Society of former White House speechwriters; Baseball Hall of Fame Ford C. Frick Award committee; and National Radio Hall of Fame committee, creating its Franklin D. Roosevelt Award in Political Communication. Smith joined the University of Rochester faculty in 1999. He lives with his wife Sarah and their two children in Upstate New York.