James Brendan Patterson is an American author and philanthropist. It was Patterson who first showed that television advertising could work for books. More radically, he has demonstrated that working with co‑writers can dramatically multiply sales. Patterson has been criticized for co-authoring many of his books and for being more of a brand that focuses on making money than an artist who focuse... Read More
James Brendan Patterson is an American author and philanthropist. Patterson was born on March 22, 1947, in Newburgh, New York, the son of Isabelle, a homemaker and teacher, and Charles Patterson, an insurance broker. In 1996 Patterson quit his advertising job to concentrate on writing. While continuing to work on the profitable Alex Cross series, he began to branch out into other literary genre... Read More
James Brendan Patterson is an American author and philanthropist. Patterson was a PhD candidate at Vanderbilt but acquired a job in advertising. He was an advertising executive at J. Walter Thompson. In November 2015, Patterson received the Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation, which cited him as a "passionate campaigner to make books and reading a national priority. A generous su... Read More
James Patterson, in full James Brendan Patterson, Jr., is an American author, principally known for his thriller and suspense novels, whose prolific output and business savvy made him a ubiquitous presence on best-seller lists in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. By the early 1990s, Patterson had modified his approach to writing fiction, adopting a style characterized by unadorned prose,... Read More
James Brendan Patterson is an American author and philanthropist. It was Patterson who first showed that television advertising could work for books. More radically, he has demonstrated that working with co‑writers can dramatically multiply sales. Patterson has been criticized for co-authoring many of his books and for being more of a brand that focuses on making money than an artist who focuse... Read More
James Brendan Patterson is an American author and philanthropist. Patterson was born in 1947 in Newburgh, a town that was then "the all-American city, and is now the murder capital of New York state". He has said that money was not plentiful when growing up, but greater poverty came from the emotional detachment of his father. "He never had a father around himself and while you did feel there w... Read More
James Patterson was born on March 22, 1947, in Newburgh, New York. He graduated summa cum laude with both a B.A. in English from Manhattan College and an M.A. in English from Vanderbilt University. Patterson's awards include the Edgar Award, the BCA Mystery Guild's Thriller of the Year, the International Thriller of the Year award, and the Children's Choice Book Award for Author of the Year. He... Read More
James Patterson studied English at Manhattan College and at Vanderbilt University. After abandoning graduate school, he had originally intended to complete a doctorate, he found employment as a junior copywriter at an advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson Co., in New York City. His first attempt at fiction, a dark, stylized crime novel called The Thomas Berryman Number, won the Edgar Allan Poe... Read More
Jonathan Littell is a writer and a dual citizen of the United States and France and is of Jewish background. His first novel written in French, Les Bienveillantes, won two major French awards. Littell is the son of author Robert Littell. Although his grandparents were Jews who emigrated from Russia to the United States at the end of the 19th century, Littell does not define himself as a Jew "at... Read More
Candace Bushnell is an American author, journalist, and television producer. She wrote a column for The New York Observer that was adapted into the bestselling Sex and the City anthology. The book was the basis for the HBO hit series Sex and the City and two subsequent movies. Trading Up is her 2003 romance novel. In the London Guardian, Stephanie Merritt wrote that the book "succeeds because s... Read More
Candace Bushnell is the critically acclaimed, international best-selling author of Killing Monica, Sex and the City, Summer and the City, The Carrie Diaries, One-Fifth Avenue, Lipstick Jungle, Trading Up, and Four Blondes. Sex and the City, published in 1996, was the basis for the HBO hit series and two subsequent blockbuster movies. Bushnell was contracted by HarperCollins in 2008 to write a s... Read More
Candace Bushnell is an American author, journalist, and television producer. She wrote a column for The New York Observer that was adapted into the bestselling Sex and the City anthology. The book was the basis for the HBO hit series Sex and the City and two subsequent movies. At the age of 19, Bushnell moved to New York City and sold a children's story to Simon & Schuster. She attended Ric... Read More
Alfred Bester was an American science fiction author, TV and radio scriptwriter, magazine editor and scripter for comic strips and comic books. He was born in Manhattan, New York City, on December 18, 1913. His father, James J. Bester, owned a shoe store and was a first-generation American whose parents were both Austrian. Bester attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of... Read More
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. She came from the Beecher family, a famous religious family, and is best known for her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which depicts the harsh conditions for enslaved African Americans. Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, Connecticut. Her father, Lyman Beecher, was a leading Congregationalist minister... Read More
Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American writer and philanthropist, the author of the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which contributed so much to popular feeling against slavery that it is cited among the causes of the American Civil War. Stowe wrote 30 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential for both her writings and her public stances... Read More
Walter Isaacson is an American writer and journalist. He has been the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C., chairman and CEO of CNN and Managing Editor of Time. Isaacson is the author of American Sketches, Einstein: His Life and Universe, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, and Kissinger: A Biography. In 2... Read More
An American writer and journalist Isaacson is the author of American Sketches, Einstein: His Life and Universe, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, and Kissinger: A Biography. In 2012, he was selected as one of the Time 100, the magazine's list of the most influential people in the world. Isaacson is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and was awarded its 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal. In 201... Read More
Ambrose Bierce, in full Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, was an American newspaperman, wit, satirist, and author of sardonic short stories based on themes of death and horror. Bierce was born in a log cabin at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio, on June 24, 1842, to Marcus Aurelius Bierce and Laura Sherwood Bierce. He was of entirely English ancestry: all of his forebears came to North America betw... Read More
Ambrose Bierce was an American writer of sardonic short stories based on themes of death and horror. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is about a man named Peyton Farquhar. He was a well-off southern planter from Alabama. Peyton, who was “ardently devoted to the Southern cause,” was prevented from joining the army by circumstance and was eager to serve the South in any way possible. One evening... Read More
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce’s literary reputation is based primarily on his short stories about the Civil War and the supernatural, a body of work that makes up a relatively small part of his total output. Often compared to the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, these stories share an attraction to death in its more bizarre forms, featuring depictions of mental deterioration, uncanny, otherworldly manifesta... Read More