Robert Ludlum (25 May, 1927 – 12 March, 2001) was an American author who is best known as the creator of Jason Bourne.

Bertrand Russell (18 May, 1872 – 2 February, 1970) was a Nobel Prize winning author, philosopher and mathematician.

Mari Sandoz (11 May, 1896 – 10 March, 1966) was a novelist, biographer and teacher from Nebraska. Ms. Sandoz wrote a lot about poisoner life and the Plains Indians. Image from http://www.marisandoz.org/events_activities/mari-sandoz-research-award/about-the-mari-sandoz-research-award.html Books by Mari Sandoz* Ms. Sandoz was the oldest of six children. Their parents with Swiss immigrants. As a child she worked hard on the farm as her father didn’t like her reading and writing (he was also known to be a violent man). At age 17 Ms. Sandoz finally manage to graduate from 8th grade and secretly took the rural teacher’s exam. She started teaching country schools without attending high-school. Even without a high-school diploma she continued to write and eventually enrolled at the University of Nebraska. Sandoz claimed to have received over 1,000 rejection slips to her short stories. She went to visit her dying father, who asked her to write his life story as his last request. The result was the book Old Jules. Every major publishing house rejected Old Jules, but Ms. Sandoz kept revising it until she had finally won a non-fiction contest held by Atlantic Press. In 1942 Ms. Sandoz published Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas, a biography of…

Horace Mann (4 May, 1796 – 2 August, 1859) was an American politician and author. Today Mr. Mann is remembered for promoting public education.

Ludwig Bemelmans (27 April, 1898 – 1 October, 1962) was a painter, illustrator, and writer for both children and adults, he is mostly known for his Madeline children’s’ books. Books by Ludwig Bemelmans* Born in Mera, Austria-Hungry (now Italy), the author was the son of a hotel owner. He spoke French and German since childhood. After Mr. Bemelmans shot and wounded a waiter in an Austrian hotel he was forced to emigrate to the United States (he was an apprentice and preferred the US over reform school). During World War II he joined the US Army, but was not sent to Europe because of his German origins. He did, however, became a Second Lieutenant. Barbara, the author’s daughter, inspired the character of The author won the Caldecott Medal for US picture book illustration in 1953 for the book Madeline’s Rescue. Aristotle Onassis hired Mr. Bemelmans to design and paint a scene at the children’s dining room on his yacht, the Christina O. A mural titled “Central Park” by Mr. Bemelmans decorates the Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel in NYC. This is his only work which is publicly displayed. John Bemelmans-Marciano, Mr. Bemelmans grandson, has taken over the Madeline series…

Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April, 1906 – 22 December, 1989) was a Nobel Prize winning playwright and novelist from Ireland. Mr. Beckett is mostly known for his play Waiting for Godot

Seán O’Casey (30 March, 1880 – 18 September, 1964) was an Irish dramatist and playwright. 1) Suffering from poor eyesight, you Mr. O’Casey had trouble at school, but taught himself to read and write by age 13. 2) His father died with he was six years old, and the family (of thirteen!) had to move from house to house in North Dublin. 3) At age fourteen Mr. O’Casey left school and started working. Life was hard and he was once fired because he did not take his cap off when collecting his pay. 4) His birth name is John, but as he got more involved in politics and took up the Irish nationalist cause, he changed his name to Sean. 5) He got his inspiration to write after Thomas Ashe, a friend, died in a hunger strike in 1917. 6) His 1923 play, The Shadow of a Gunman, was the first to be accepted and performed at the Abbey Theatre, which began a long and fruitful relationship. 7) Mr. O’Casey is known as the first Irish playwright to write about Dublin’s working class. 8) In 1934, while visiting New York City for the production of his play Within the Gates, he met and friended Eugene O’Neill. He liked the production…

Sid Fleischman (16 March, 1920 – 17 March, 2010) was an author of children’s books, adult novels and also wrote screenplays.

William L. Shirer (23 February, 1904 – 28 December, 1993) was an American journalist, author and war correspondent. Mr. Shirer’s best known work is the a history of Nazi Germany titled The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Books by William L. Shirer* 1) As a college graduate, Mr. Shirer worked his way from his hometown of Chicago to Europe on a cattle boat in 1925. He stayed on the European continent for the next 15 years. 2) in 1934 Mr. Shirer was hired by the Belin bureau of Universal Service, owned by William Randolph Hearst. Mr. Shirer said that this moves was going from “bad to Hearst”. 3) As a journalist, Mr. Shirer first came into the public eye during 1940, reporting on the radio on the rise of the Nazi dictatorship. 4) Mr. Shirer was the first reporter that Edward R. Murrow hired for this CBS radio team which became to be known as “Murrow’s Boys”. 5) At first Mr. Shirer felt that his voice was unsuitable for radio. At first print journalists were prohibited from talking on the radio (a policy that both Mr. Shirer and Mr. Murrow found absurd), but CBS changed that policy in 1938. At the time, German…

Ayn Rand (2 February, 1905 – 6 March, 1982) was a Russian-American author best known for her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.