During his career he has worked with a wide range of subjects including civil rights pioneer Charles Evers, physicists Eugene Wigner and George Pake, former Goldman Sachs executive John Whitehead, former United States Senator Edward Brooke, and former Boston mayor Raymond Flynn.
It was through the Smithsonian, as an oral historian on staff,[1] that Szanton first encountered the Hungarian-American Eugene Wigner, a famously modest man who had always resisted entreaties to write his memoirs.
For example, a critic of popular music for a major newsmagazine might be hired to bring material to, and check the accuracy of, the rich but scattered spoken recollections of a pop star.
The journalist critic was hired primarily for what he or she knew about the subject area, and for an ability to meet deadlines—not for any particular dedication to, or demonstrated skill at, the memoir form.
Memoir collaborators often bring to their work detailed knowledge from certain fields—Szanton is something of an expert in the early history of atomic weaponry and of the U.S. civil rights movement from 1963 to 1971.