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.

As an editor for St. Nicholas Magazine, Mrs. Mapes was in charge of it becoming one of the most successful children magazines in the late 1800s

Alexander Woollcott (19 January, 1887 – 23 January, 1943) was a critic and commentator, as well as a member of the Algonquin Round Table. The Algonquin Round Table was a group of writers and actors from New York City which met for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until 1929 or so and inspired each other creatively. 1) The author was born in Colts Neck Township, NJ to a father who drifted through several jobs spending a long time away from his family. 2) He attended high school in Philadelphia, PA. 3) At college Mr. Woollcott founded a drama group, and was the editor of the student literary magazine. 4) In 1909 Mr. Woollcott joined the New York Times as a cub reporter. 5) A day after World War I was declared, Mr. Woollcott volunteered as a private to the medical corps. The intelligence section of the American Expeditionary Forces chose, by now, Sgt. Woollcott to be among the other six or so men who will create the Stars and Stripes. 6) As the chief reporter, Mr. Woollcott did not just write propaganda, but also the horrors of the Great War. 7) After the war, Mr. Woollcott returned to the Times, then to the New York Herald…

Jack London (12 January, 1876 – 22 November 1916) was an American writer and journalist. Some of his most famous works are White Fang and The Call of the Wild. Books by Jack London* 1) He was born as John Griffith London in San Francisco, to Flora Wellman, an unwedded woman of wealthy means. Flora later married John London, a disabled Civil War Veteran. 2) Young Jack was raised by Virginia Prentiss, an ex-slave who was a major maternal figure throughout his life. 3) After moving around and working a bunch of jobs, Jack, a prolific reader, decided that writing would be his best chance to escape the miserable future of being a factory worker. 4) Mr. London became a very disciplined writer, producing over fifty volumes of novels, essays, and short stories. 5) London’s stories about Polynesian and Melanesian cultures were instrumental in popularizing Hawaii as a tourist spot by breaking the taboo over leprosy. 6) As a famous writer, Mr. London used his celebrity to endorse social causes dear to him which included women’s suffrage, socialism, and prohibition. Later he used his celebrity to endorse commercial products. 7) As a supporter of women’s suffrage and prohibition, it is ironic that a caricature of the author…

Mr. Eco said that social media “gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community […] but now they

Robert Ruark (29 December, 1915 – 1 July, 1965) was an American author, columnist and hunter who wrote about his experiences. Image from https://www.africahunting.com/ Books by Robert Ruark* 1) Born in Wilmington, NC the family was hit hard by the Great Depression, but still managed to send the author to college, at age 15. 2) Contrary to popular belief, the author did not graduate with a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He did take a lot of journalism classes, and did graduate. 3) In 1936 Mr. Ruark moved to Washington DC and was hired as a copy boy for The Washington Daily News. Within a few months, he became the paper’s top sports reporter. 4) Serving in the US Navy during World War II, Mr. Ruark was an ensign and served ten months as a gunnery officer. 5) Mr. Ruark’s newspaper columns were collected into two books, I Didn’t Know It Was Loaded (1948) and One for the Road (1949). 6) Being a successful writer allowed the author to fulfill a lifelong wish and go on a safari to Africa. During his trip he was paired with a guide named Harry Selby because…