Dick Lehr, an award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist, is the co-author, with Gerard O'Neill, of Black Mass, a New York Times bestseller about Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger. It was later made into a film starring Johnny Depp.

His most recent book is The Birth of a Movement, which Booklist deemed in a starred review "a remarkable look at the power of mass media and the nascent civil rights movement at a pivotal time in American history."

The book was adapted into a PBS documentary that aired on the network's primetime show, Independent Lens, in February 2017. Dick Lehr now teaches journalism at Boston University. He lives near Boston.