Curated category
20th-century American non-fiction writers
- John F. KennedyJohn Fitzgerald Kennedy entered the world on the 29th of May 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.
- Donald TrumpDonald John Trump was born on the 14th of June 1946 at Jamaica Hospital in Queens. He grew up in a twenty-three room mansion in the Jamaica Estates…
- George H. W. BushOn the 9th of June 1943, George Herbert Walker Bush became one of the youngest pilots ever commissioned in the United States Navy, a distinction that would…
- Barack ObamaBarack Obama was born on the 4th of August 1961, at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, Hawaii.
- Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt Jr. was born on the 27th of October 1858, at 28 East 20th Street in Manhattan. His youth was defined by debilitating asthma attacks that…
- Jon ParelesJon Pareles was born in 1953 within the quiet borders of Connecticut. His early life unfolded through the keys of a piano and the mouthpiece of a jazz flute.
- John SteinbeckJohn Steinbeck was born on the 27th of February 1902 in Salinas, California. He grew up in a small rural valley set about 25 miles from the Pacific Coast.
- Stephen ColbertOn the 11th of September 1974, a ten-year-old boy named Stephen Colbert stood in the living room of his family home on James Island.
- Langston HughesJames Mercer Langston Hughes entered the world on the 1st of February 1901, in Joplin, Missouri. His family tree held deep roots of contradiction and…
- Roger EbertRoger Joseph Ebert was born on the 18th of June 1942 in Urbana, Illinois. He grew up as the only child of Annabel and Walter Harry Ebert.
- Leon FestingerLeon Festinger was born on the 8th of May 1919 in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants named Alex and Sara Solomon Festinger.
- Ralph BakshiRalph Bakshi was born on the 29th of October 1938, in Haifa, Mandatory Palestine. His family moved to the United States in 1939 and settled in the…
- Henry KissingerHeinz Alfred Kissinger was born on the 27th of May 1923 in Fürth, Bavaria. His family lived under Nazi rule when he was nine years old and Adolf Hitler…
- Joseph StiglitzJoseph Eugene Stiglitz was born on the 9th of February, 1943 in Gary, Indiana. He grew up in a Jewish family where his mother Charlotte worked as a…
- Tom ShoneTom Shone grew up in the United Kingdom. He attended Varndean VIth form college located in Brighton, Sussex. This educational background laid the foundation…
- Herbert MarcuseHerbert Marcuse was born on the 19th of July 1898 in Berlin. His family belonged to the German upper-middle class and identified as Jewish.
- 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…
- Linda McCartneyLinda Louise Eastman entered the world on the 24th of September 1941 in Manhattan. Her father Lee Eastman practiced entertainment law and counted famous…
- Tupac ShakurTupac Amaru Shakur was born on the 16th of June 1971, in East Harlem, Manhattan. His birth name was Lesane Parish Crooks until he was renamed at age one.
- Milton FriedmanMilton Friedman was born on the 31st of July 1912 in Brooklyn, New York City. His parents were Jewish working-class immigrants from Beregszász in Carpathian…
- Arthur MendelArthur Mendel entered the world on the 6th of June 1905 in Boston. He grew up in a city rich with musical history before he ever stepped into a concert hall.
- Joseph CampbellIn 1929, Joseph Campbell moved into a rented shack in Woodstock, New York. The structure lacked running water and relied on scattered wells for its supply.
- Arnold SchwarzeneggerArnold Alois Schwarzenegger was born on the 30th of July 1947, in the small village of Thal, Styria. His father Gustav served as the local police chief and…
- Edmund WilsonEdmund Wilson Jr. entered the world on the 8th of May 1895 in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father Edmund Wilson Sr. served as the state Attorney General before…
- Joseph HellerJoseph Heller was born on the 1st of May 1923, in Coney Island. His parents were poor Jewish immigrants from Russia named Lena and Isaac Donald Heller.
- Paul SamuelsonPaul Samuelson was born in Gary, Indiana, on the 15th of May 1915. His family consisted of upwardly mobile Jewish immigrants from Poland who had prospered…
- Ludwig von MisesLudwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was born on the 29th of September 1881 in Lemberg. This city now bears the name Lviv and sits within Ukraine today.
- Charles A. BeardCharles Austin Beard was born on the 27th of November 1874 in Knightstown, Indiana. He grew up working on a family farm in the Corn Belt region.
- Daniel YerginDaniel Howard Yergin arrived in the world on the 6th of February 1947. He grew up in Los Angeles, California. His father Irving worked at Warner Brothers and…
- W. E. B. Du BoisWilliam Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on the 23rd of February 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. His mother Mary Silvina Burghardt came from a…
- Sally RideSally Kristen Ride was born on the 26th of May 1951, in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles. Her mother worked as a volunteer counselor at a women's…
- George Dyson (science historian)George Dyson lived inside a wooden structure thirty meters above the ground. He built this shelter from salvaged materials on the shore of Burrard Inlet…
- Daniel KahnemanDaniel Kahneman was born in Tel Aviv on the 5th of March 1934 while his mother Rachel visited her family. His parents were Lithuanian Jews who had moved to…
- James M. BuchananJames McGill Buchanan Jr. was born on the 3rd of October 1919 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He grew up on a farm that suffered during the 1920s when his father…
- George SorosOn the 12th of August 1930, György Schwartz was born in Budapest to a prosperous non-observant Jewish family. His father Tivadar worked as a lawyer and…
- Ambrose BierceAmbrose Gwinnett Bierce was born in a log cabin at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio on the 24th of June 1842. He entered the world as the tenth child…
- Michael CrichtonJohn Michael Crichton was born on the 23rd of October 1942, in Chicago, Illinois. He grew up in Roslyn, New York, where he walked to school and rode his bike…
- Dennis Kennedy (author)Dennis Kennedy was born on the 1st of November 1940 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He studied literature, philosophy, and history at the University of San Francisco…
- Fletcher PrattMurray Fletcher Pratt stood before a grand jury in February 1916 after police arrested him for stealing less than twenty-five dollars from newspaper cash…
- B. F. SkinnerBurrhus Frederic Skinner was born on the 20th of March 1904 in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. His father William Skinner worked as a lawyer while his mother…
- George H. W. BushOn the 12th of June 1943, a young man named George Herbert Walker Bush stood on the deck of the USS San Jacinto. He was only nineteen years old and had just…
- David BrinGlen David Brin was born on the 6th of October 1950 in Glendale, California. His parents were Selma and Herb Brin, who raised him as a Jewish child.
- Ernest BeckerErnest Becker was born on the 27th of September 1924 in Springfield, Massachusetts. His parents were Jewish immigrants who raised him before he joined the…
- Wilhelm ReichWilhelm Reich was born on the 24th of March 1897 in Dobzau, Galicia. He grew up as the first son of Leon Reich and Cäcilie Roniger.
- 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.
- Elliot ForbesElliot Forbes entered the world on the 20th of August 1917, into a family that defined Boston's cultural elite. His father Edward Forbes directed Harvard's…
- Kareem Abdul-JabbarFerdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. grew up in the Dyckman Street projects of Inwood, Upper Manhattan, after moving there at age three in 1950.
- Phil JacksonPhilip Douglas Jackson was born on the 17th of September, 1945 in Deer Lodge, Montana. His parents Charles and Elisabeth Funk Jackson served as ministers for…
- Elinor OstromElinor Claire Awan was born on the 7th of August 1933 in Los Angeles, California. Her mother Leah Hopkins worked as a musician while her father Adrian Awan…
- Roger LowensteinRoger Lowenstein entered the world in 1954 within the quiet streets of Larchmont, New York. His father Louis worked as an attorney and taught law at Columbia…