Curated category
20th-century American essayists
- Stephen KingStephen Edwin King was born on the 21st of September 1947 in Portland, Maine. His father Donald Edwin King worked as a traveling vacuum salesman after…
- Ernest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was born on the 21st of July 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. He grew up as the second of six children to Clarence Edmonds Hemingway and…
- T. S. EliotThomas Stearns Eliot was born on the 26th of September 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri. He lived at a house on Locust Street for his first sixteen years before…
- Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis on the 11th of November 1922. He descended from a long line of German Americans whose family fortune rested on the…
- Ron PaulRonald Ernest Paul was born on the 20th of August 1935, in Pittsburgh. He grew up as the son of Howard Caspar Paul and Margaret Dumont Paul.
- Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was born on the 30th of October 1885 in a two-story clapboard house in Hailey, Idaho Territory.
- Hunter S. ThompsonHunter Stockton Thompson entered the world on the 18th of July 1937, in Louisville, Kentucky. He grew up as the first of three sons born to Virginia Davison…
- John CageJohn Milton Cage Jr. was born on the 5th of September 1912 at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles. His father, John Milton Cage Sr., worked as an…
- Philip K. DickPhilip Kindred Dick was born on the 16th of December 1928 in Chicago, Illinois. He arrived six weeks prematurely alongside his twin sister Jane Charlotte…
- Arthur MillerArthur Asher Miller was born on the 17th of October 1915 in Harlem, Manhattan. He grew up as the second child of Augusta and Isidore Miller.
- W. H. AudenWystan Hugh Auden was born at 54 Bootham in York, England, on the 21st of February 1907. His father George Augustus Auden worked as a physician while his…
- Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky was born on the 7th of December 1928 in the East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were Ashkenazi Jewish…
- Ralph EllisonRalph Waldo Ellison was born on the 1st of March 1913 in Oklahoma City. His father Lewis Alfred worked as a construction foreman and small-business owner…
- Rudolf CarnapRudolf Carnap was born on the 18th of May 1891 in Wuppertal, Germany. His father rose from being a poor ribbon-weaver to own a ribbon-making factory.
- Jonathan FranzenJonathan Earl Franzen was born on the 17th of August 1959 in Western Springs, Illinois. He grew up in an affluent neighborhood in the St.
- Paul KrugmanPaul Robin Krugman was born on the 28th of February 1953 in Albany, New York. He spent his early years moving between upstate cities before settling into…
- Claude ShannonClaude Elwood Shannon was born on the 30th of April 1916 in a hospital near Petoskey, Michigan. His family lived in the small town of Gaylord where he spent…
- Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov arrived in the United States on the 3rd of February 1923, aboard the RMS Baltic at age three. His family traveled from Petrovichi, Russian SFSR…
- Jerry FodorJerry Alan Fodor was born in New York City on the 22nd of April 1935. He grew up in a Jewish household and pursued his undergraduate studies at Columbia…
- Hilary PutnamHilary Whitehall Putnam arrived in the world on the 31st of July 1926, within a hospital in Chicago, Illinois. His father Samuel worked as a scholar of…
- Stephen GreenblattStephen Jay Greenblatt arrived in the world on the 7th of November 1943. He grew up in Newton, Massachusetts after his family moved from Boston.
- Angela DavisAngela Yvonne Davis was born on the 26th of January 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama. Her family lived in the "Dynamite Hill" neighborhood during the 1950s.
- Cornel WestCornel Ronald West was born on the 2nd of June 1953, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He grew up in Sacramento, California, where his mother Irene Rayshell Bias worked as…
- Lewis MumfordLewis Mumford was born on the 19th of October 1895 in Flushing, Queens. He grew up in a household that valued education and culture.
- George SteinerFrancis George Steiner was born on the 23rd of April 1929 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris. His right arm withered from birth yet his mother insisted he use…