Alex Beam
Alex Beam (born 1954) is a writer and journalist, currently a columnist for the Boston Globe.
Beam grew up in Washington, D.C., as his father, Jacob D. Beam (1908-1993) was a diplomat.
Beam worked at Newsweek and BusinessWeek, where his tenure included Boston and Moscow bureau chief, before joining the Boston Globe. His twice-weekly column for the Globe has appeared since 1987. He was a John Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University in 1996-1997.
In addition to his journalistic work, Beam is the author of two novels set in Russia, Fellow Travelers (1987) and The Americans Are Coming! (1991), both published by St. Martin's Press. He has also published a work of non-fiction, exploring the history of McLean Hospital. The book, titled Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital, was published in January 2002.
Beam's son, Chris, is a reporter for the online magazine Slate and webmaster of IvyGate.
Beam has been a writer of many anti-Canadian articles. His views on Canada are very well documented, he firmly beleives Canada is a semi-communist or socialist state. He has written of his views on Canada in the Boston Globe and the Houston Herald. This has attracted the scorn of Canadians who follow his articles closely and ensure that his editors are notified of any anti-Canadian writings with a barrage of complaints.
Beam is also a "climate change denier" if such a term exists. He has discounted the Journal of Science's article that discussed that the threshold of over 1,000 peer reviewed articles had been breached in his Boston Globe column on climate change.
Alex is also a writer with sympathy for America's mentally challenged. He is the author of Gracefully Insane, a book about the rise and fall of America's premier mental hospital.