It’s the birthday of Ernst Jünger (1895-1998, #ridiculouslylonglife), a prominent and controversial German author who wrote more than 50 books in his 102 years. Jünger was highly decorated for his service to Germany during WWI, refused to be BFFs with Hitler or to join the Nazi party leading up to WWII, nonetheless served as a [...]
It’s the birthday of Jayne Ann (Castle) Krentz (b. 1948), who has written so many books (more than 150) and so many New York Times best sellers (50 consecutive best sellers) that they’ve spawned a bunch of pseudonyms, though she has gotten it down to three names: Jayne Ann Krentz (her married name) for contemporary [...]
It’s the birthday of another important poet, Louis Simpson (1923-2012, #nicelonglife), whose collection At the End of the Open Road (1963) won the Pulitzer and who was also a respected scholar and critic. Simpson was born in Kingston, Jamaica. He did not know for most of his childhood that his Russian-born mother was Jewish, nor [...]
It’s the birthday of Robert Frost (1874-1963, #nicelonglife), whose poetry embodied rural New England and the “rough-hewn individuality of the American creative spirit” and who won, frankly, a pant load of Pulitzers (four), more than any other poet. Frost was born in San Francisco, California, but his journalist father died in 1885 of tuberculosis and [...]
Susan’s Almanac Project for March 25, 2019 It’s the birthday of Kate DiCamillo (b. 1964), two of whose 25 children’s books have won Newbery Medals and who has been writing beautifully about surviving loss and loneliness from her very first novel, Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). DiCamillo was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but the family moved [...]
Susan’s Almanac Project for March 22, 2019 It’s the birthday of Louis L’Amour (1908-1988), whose 100+ books—mostly westerns—sold more than 200 million copies to make him one of the most popular authors in the world. He was also the first novelist to receive a Congressional gold medal (1983). (A quick look at the list of [...]
It’s the birthday of Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier (1768-1830), brilliant mathematician but also—because how else are you going to spend your time when you’re not developing an eponymous infinite mathematical series—a brilliant Egyptologist responsible for the publication of the 10-volume Description de l’Égypte, one of the most comprehensive works ever published on Egypt, and for which Fourier [...]
It’s the birthday of children’s book author Louis Sachar (b. 1954), best known and loved for his wacky Wayside School series and for Holes, which won a ton of awards including the 1999 Newbery Medal and which was made into a movie in 2003 starring Sigourney Weaver and Jon Voight. Sachar was born in East [...]
It’s the birthday of Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890), explorer, scholar, spy, and hyperpolyglot who wrote more than 40 books about his travels and another 30 books of translations, including the first complete and shockingly accurate English translations of both The Arabian Nights (1884) and The Kama Sutra (1883). He also sported a moustache six [...]
It’s the birthday of one of the giants of American literature, John Updike (1932-2009), who wrote 61 books and is best known for his novels about Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a has-been high school basketball star trapped in an ordinary, small-town life: Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest [...]
It’s the birthday of author and professor Frank Brady (b. 1934), who numbers among the biographies he has written one of the bestselling chess books of all time, Profile of a Prodigy: The Life and Games of Bobby Fischer (1965). Brady, a one-time friend of Fischer’s, followed this up with a 2011 biography, Endgame: Bobby [...]
It’s the birthday of Colin Fletcher (1922-2007), who went on insanely long hikes—e.g., Mexico to Oregon—and then wrote books about it, including The Complete Walker (1968), often called the hiker’s bible, which bible is considered responsible for jumpstarting the entire backpacking industry. Fletcher was born in Cardiff, Wales, served with the Royal Marines in WWII, [...]