He and his wife Susan E. Tifft (1951–2010) wrote long books about two newspaper dynasties, beginning with the Binghams in 1991 and focusing on Barry Bingham, Sr., "The Patriarch: The Rise and Fall of the Bingham Dynasty" (Summit Books, 574pp). A review in the "Los Angeles Times" called it "the best kind of family history—one so packed with archival fact and telling anecdote that a reader can be excused for believing that at times he or she understands the Binghams far better than they seem to have understood themselves." Jones and Tifft followed "The Dynasty" with a 1999 book about the history of Adolph S. Ochs and his descendants, "The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times" (Little, Brown, 870pp). The book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and selected by Time magazine as one of the five best nonfiction books of that year.