Author Bio
• Birth—1955
• Where—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California, Berkley
• Currently—lives near San Francisco, California
Steven Pressman is an American legal journalist, freelance journalist and investigative journalist. He was born in Los Angeles in 1955 and obtained his B.A. 1977 in political science from the University of California at Berkeley.
Writing
Pressman is the author of a book about Werner Erhard, Outrageous Betrayal: The Dark Journey of Werner Erhard from est to Exile, published in 1993. Beginning in 2010, he wrote, produced, and directed a documentary film, To Save a Life, about the rescue of 50 Jewish children from Austria during World War II. His 2014 book, 50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany, is based on the film.
Pressman has worked as a newspaper and magazine journalist in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. While researching his first book on Erhard, Pressman continued writing for various publications including California Lawyer, Legal Times, California Republic (where he was senior editor), and the Columbia Law Review. He contributed an article on libel law in 1994, for the United States Department of State.
In 1998, Landmark Education spent months in an unsuccessful attempt to compel Pressman to respond to deposition questions aimed at obtaining the confidential sources (used during research on Outrageous Betrayal) for use in the then-active litigation involving the Cult Awareness Network.
Filmmaking
Pressman produced short videos for the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California. In 2010, he served as writer, director, and producer for the 2013 HBO documentary film To Save a Life (retitled 50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus) is the story of Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, a Jewish couple from Philadelphia who traveled to Nazi Germany in 1939. With the help of the B'rith Sholom fraternal organization, they saved Jewish children in Vienna from likely death in the Holocaust by finding them new homes in Philadelphia. The heroic Krauses were the grandparents of Pressman's wife, Liz Perle, and the film is based on the manuscript of a memoir left behind by Eleanor Kraus when she died in 1989. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/5/2014.)