Herman Wouk

Who they were

Herman Wouk was an American author. He published 15 novels, many of them historical fiction such as The Caine Mutiny (1951), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1952. Other well-known works included The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, the bildungsroman Marjorie Morningstar; and non-fiction such as This Is My God, an explanation of Judaism from a Modern Orthodox perspective, written for Jewish and non-Jewish readers. His books have been translated into 27 languages.

Early life

Early life Wouk was born in the Bronx , New York, the second of three children born to Esther (née Levine) and Abraham Isaac Wouk, Russian Jewish immigrants from what is today Belarus . His father toiled for many years to raise the family out of poverty before opening a successful laundry service. [ 1 ] When Wouk was 13, his maternal grandfather, a Rabbi named Mendel Leib Levine, came from Minsk to live with them and took charge of his grandson's Jewish education.

Path and career

Military career Following the attack on Pearl Harbor , Wouk joined the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1942 and served in the Pacific Theater during World War II , an experience he later characterized as educational: "I learned about machinery, I learned how men behaved under pressure, and I learned about Americans." Wouk served as an officer aboard two destroyer minesweepers (DMS), the USS  Zane and USS  Southard , becoming executive officer of the Southard while holding the rank of lieutenant .

Writing career His second novel, City Boy , proved to be a commercial disappointment when it was published in 1948. Wouk claimed [ citation needed ] it was largely ignored amid the excitement over Norman Mailer 's bestselling World War II novel The Naked and the Dead . While writing his next novel, Wouk read each chapter to his wife as it was completed and she remarked that if they did not like this one,

Why this date

Herman Wouk appears on our May 17 calendar for 2019 as a death entry.