Journalist, Author. He is remembered for his blockbuster article in Rolling Stone magazine, which eventually brought down General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of US/NATO forces in Afghanistan. Born Michael Mahon Hastings in Burlington, Vermont, his parents were both doctors. He lived for a while in Malone, New York and Montreal, Quebec where his mother trained to be a pediatric ophthalmology surgeon at McGill University. At 16 he returned to Vermont and graduated in 1998 from Rice Memorial High School in South Burlington. He attended Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut before earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from New York University, New York City, New York in 2002. A frequent contributor to Gentlemen's Quarterly, he was also a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine. From 2002 to 2008 he was a journalist for Newsweek magazine, who was known for his coverage of the Iraq War and in 2008 he wrote a book about the death of his fiancée Andrea Parhamovich, entitled "I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story." In June 2010 Rolling Stone published "The Runaway General," his profile of US Army General Stanley McChrystal, then commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force in the Afghanistan war. The article contained remarks made by McChrystal's staff that were overtly critical and contemptuous of White House staff and other high ranking civilian officials. On June 22, 2010 the news of the forthcoming article reached the attention of the American print media and the White House. McChrystal immediately issued an extensive apology, and Duncan Boothby, the civilian contractor responsible for coordinating the article with Hastings, resigned. President Barack Obama then summoned McChrystal to the White House the following day and subsequently relieved him of command. The article earned him a Polk Award and The Huffington Post named him a 2010 Game Changer for his reporting. In January 2012 he published his book "The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan," a New York Times bestseller which gave the most detailed public account of his travels with McChrystal and his team. He died in a single-vehicle automobile crash in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California at the age of 33. Just hours prior to his death, he indicated that he was under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI subsequently released a statement clarifying that he was not under investigation and the Los Angeles County Police Department concluded there were no signs of foul play involved in the accident that claimed his life. At the time of his death he was working as a reporter for BuzzFeed.