Short answers, pulled from the story.
Kurt Vonnegut was an American author born in Indianapolis on the 11th of November 1922 and known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. Over fifty years he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works.
Kurt Vonnegut's most famous novel is Slaughterhouse-Five, published in 1969. It rose to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list, made him famous, and drew on his experience surviving the firebombing of Dresden.
Kurt Vonnegut survived the firebombing of Dresden by taking refuge in a meat locker three stories underground in the slaughterhouse where he was held as a prisoner of war. The bombing began on the 13th of February 1945 and killed about 25,000 civilians.
Kurt Vonnegut served as an intelligence scout with the 106th Infantry Division and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He was captured by the Germans on the 22nd of December 1944, interned in Dresden, and later awarded a Purple Heart for frostbite.
Kurt Vonnegut was an atheist, a humanist, and a freethinker who served as honorary president of the American Humanist Association. In politics he favored socialism over liberalism or conservatism and admired the socialist leader Eugene V. Debs.
Kurt Vonnegut died in Manhattan on the night of the 11th of April 2007 at the age of 84. His death resulted from brain injuries he suffered in a fall at his brownstone home several weeks earlier.
Before writing full time, Kurt Vonnegut worked as a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and as a technical writer and publicist for General Electric in Schenectady, New York. He quit General Electric on the 1st of January 1951 to move to Cape Cod and write.