John Anthony Maltese

John Anthony Maltese is a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia. He won a Grammy Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1996 for liner notes that he co-authored with his father, John Maltese, for the 65-CD BMG set, “The Jascha Heifetz Collection.”

Most recently the two co-authored an article on Heifetz in the December 2005 issue of The Strad magazine. They have amassed one of the finest private collections in the world of early 78 rpm recordings and have worked with record companies to reissue historic performances including RCA, Marston, Naxos, Symposium, Masters of the Bow, Strad, and the Maud Powell Foundation. Film footage from their collection was used in Bruno Monsaingeon’s video documentary on Yehudi Menuhin. They have assembled a unique collection of musical autographs dating back to the 1700s. Material from that collection formed the basis of a yearlong exhibit commemorating Heifetz’s 100th birthday at the Edmund D. Edelman Hollywood Bowl Museum in 2001.

In addition to the work with his father, Maltese edited The Accompanist (the memoirs of pianist André Benoist), has contributed discographies to several books, written essays on Ervin Nyiregyhazi, Artur Schnabel, Ovide Musin, Albert Spalding, and others for American National Biography (Oxford University Press), and published in the journal of the Sir Thomas Beecham Society.

For his day job as a political scientist he was named the 2004 “Georgia Professor of the Year” by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). His books include The Selling of Supreme Court Nominees (winner of the American Political Science Association’s “C. Hermann Pritchett Award”), Spin Control: The White House Office of Communications and the Management of Presidential News, and The Politics of the Presidency (co-authored with Joseph A. Pika), currently in its 6th edition.