[2] He authored six nonfiction books, including Gone Crazy and Back Again: The Rise and Fall of the Rolling Stone Generation, about Jann Wenner and his magazine.
[4] His grandfather, Sam B. Anson, was a notable personality in the city's journalism industry as editor and publisher of several local daily newspapers.
He went on to study international relations and English at the University of Notre Dame, obtaining a bachelor's degree from that institution in 1967.
[9] He discovered 15 years later that Hesburgh called Pope Paul VI, who purportedly appealed to the Cambodian authorities to secure Anson's release.
He was a product of the New Journalism, which embraced the notion that journalists ought to immerse themselves in what they wrote and utilize "dramatic literary devices" to create a more powerful narrative.
[7][10] His 1981 Esquire cover story on Doug Kenney, "The Life and Death of a Comic Genius," was the first major print remembrance of the National Lampoon humorist and screenwriter.
He consequently sued the publishing company for $1 million, alleging that they had been pressured by superiors in the industry to abandon his book.
[6] Anson married his first wife, Diane McAniff, in the late 1960s, after meeting at the University of Notre Dame.
He consequently became involved with the Visible Ink writing program at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.