Herman Wouk was born in the Bronx, New York on May 27, 1915. He received a bachelor's degree in comparative literature and philosophy from Columbia University. In 1936, he became a staff writer for the radio comedian Fred Allen. He enlisted in the Navy immediately after Pearl Harbor and was posted as a radio officer in the South Pacific.
His debut novel, Aurora Dawn, was published in 1947. His other novels included The City Boy, Marjorie Morningstar, Youngblood Hawke, Don't Stop the Carnival, The Winds of War, War and Remembrance, The Hope, The Gift, A Hole in Texas, and The Lawgiver. He received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1952 for The Caine Mutiny. He received the first Library of Congress Lifetime Achievement Award for the Writing of Fiction in 2008. His nonfiction books included This Is My God, The Language God Talks, and Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author.
Several of his books were adapted into movies including The Caine Mutiny and Marjorie Morningstar. He adapted the courtroom sections of The Caine Mutiny into the Broadway play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. His other Broadway shows included The Traitor and Nature's Way. He died on May 17, 2019 at the age of 103.
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