US writer. He is best known for best-selling novels, such as The Caine Mutiny: A
Novel of World War II (1951), Marjorie Morningstar (1955), and The Winds of War
(1971). Born in New York, New York, he studied at Columbia University, gaining a BA
in 1934, before he was employed in New York, as a jokewriter for radio comedians
(1934–35) and as a scriptwriter for Fred Allen (1936–41). He also wrote plays.