Facing Up

Peter George Peterson was born in Kearney, Nebraska on June 5, 1926. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1947. He began his business career at Market Facts, a Chicago research company. In 1951, he received an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business before returning to Market Facts as an executive vice president. He went on to become secretary of commerce under President Richard M. Nixon, lead government commissions and advisory bodies, and was chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York for 22 years.

He wrote several books including Will America Grow Up Before It Grows Old: How the Coming Social Security Crisis Threatens You, Your Family and Your Country; Gray Dawn: How the Coming Age Wave Will Transform America - and the World; and Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It. His memoir, The Education of an American Dreamer: How a Son of Greek Immigrants Learned His Way from a Nebraska Diner to Washington, Wall Street and Beyond, was published in 2009. He died on March 20, 2018 at the age of 91.

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