Blackman graduated from Tenafly High School in 1964,[1] received an Associate of Arts degree from Colby Junior College in 1966, a diplome from the Sorbonne in 1967 and a B.A.
She also spent three years as a foreign correspondent in Time's Moscow bureau.
Before that, Blackman was a reporter for the Associated Press with assignments that included the Watergate hearings, presidential politics, the Iranian hostage crisis and the assassination attempts on Governor George Wallace and President Ronald Reagan.
She is also the author of Seasons Of Her Life, a biography of Madeleine K. Albright, the first women to become U.S. secretary of state (Scribner/Simon & Schuster, 1998); co-author of The Spy Next Door, about the secret life of FBI turncoat Robert Hanssen (Little Brown, 2002); and author of Wild Rose, A True Story, about the remarkable life of Civil War spy Rose O'Neal Greenhow, who grew up in the nation's capital in the 19th century and spied for the South during the American Civil War (Random House, 2005).
[citation needed] She is married to Michael Putzel and lives in Washington, DC, and on the coast of Maine.