Curated category
21st-century American non-fiction writers
- 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…
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Gwyneth PaltrowGwyneth Kate Paltrow entered the world on the 27th of September 1972 in Los Angeles. Her father Bruce Paltrow worked as a film producer and director while…
- Vernor VingeVernor Steffen Vinge published his first short story, "Apartness", in the June 1965 issue of the British magazine New Worlds. He had just received his B.S.
- 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.
- Al GoreOn the 31st of March 1948, Albert Arnold Gore Jr. was born in Washington, D.C., the second child of a U.S. Representative and his wife Pauline LaFon Gore.
- 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…
- 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.
- 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…
- 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…
- Eric SchmidtEric Emerson Schmidt was born on the 27th of April 1955 in Falls Church, Virginia. He spent part of his childhood in Italy while his father worked for the…
- JD VanceJames David Vance was born James Donald Bowman on the 2nd of August 1984, in Middletown, Ohio. He grew up in a home marked by poverty and abuse while his…
- Dolly PartonDolly Rebecca Parton was born on the 19th of January 1946, inside a one-room cabin on the banks of the Little Pigeon River in Pittman Center, Tennessee.
- 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…
- 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…
- Ken JenningsKenneth Wayne Jennings III was born on the 23rd of May 1974, in Edmonds, Washington. His father worked as an international lawyer and moved the family to…
- 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…
- Alan GreenspanAlan Greenspan was born on the 6th of March 1926 in the Washington Heights area of New York City. His father Herbert worked as a stockbroker while his mother…
- 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…
- 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…
- Steve BannonStephen Kevin Bannon was born on the 27th of November 1953 in Norfolk, Virginia. His father worked as an AT&T telephone lineman and a middle manager while…
- 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…
- 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.
- 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…
- Wendell WallachWendell Wallach was born on the 21st of April 1946 in Torrington, Connecticut. His mother Gerda Wilhelmina Lewenz had been born in Berlin during World War I…
- Gary BeckerGary Stanley Becker was born on the 2nd of December 1930 in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. He grew up in a Jewish family within that small coal-mining town.
- 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.
- 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…
- David M. EwaltDavid M. Ewalt was born in 1976 and began his career writing for InformationWeek. He moved from that role to become deputy editor of Forbes magazine.
- 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…
- 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…
- Charley RosenCharles Elliot Rosen entered the world on the 18th of January 1941 in The Bronx. He attended Theodore Roosevelt High School before stepping onto the court at…