Herman Wouk

Author profile

born

May 27, 1915 in New York, New York, The United States

gender

male

website

http://www.hermanwouk.net/

genre

Literature & Fiction, Historical Fiction, Religion & Spirituality

About this author

edit data

Herman Wouk is a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning Jewish American author with a number of notable novels to his credit, including The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.

Herman Wouk was born in New York City into a Jewish family that had emigrated from Russia. After a childhood and adolescence in the Bronx and a high school diploma from Townsend Harris High School, he earned a B.A. from Columbia University in 1934, where he was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity and studied under philosopher Irwin Edman. Soon thereafter, he became a radio dramatist, working in David Freedman's "Joke Factory" and later with Fred Allen for five years and then, in 1941, for the United States government, writing radio spots to sell...more Herman Wouk is a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning Jewish American author with a number of notable novels to his credit, including The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.

Herman Wouk was born in New York City into a Jewish family that had emigrated from Russia. After a childhood and adolescence in the Bronx and a high school diploma from Townsend Harris High School, he earned a B.A. from Columbia University in 1934, where he was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity and studied under philosopher Irwin Edman. Soon thereafter, he became a radio dramatist, working in David Freedman's "Joke Factory" and later with Fred Allen for five years and then, in 1941, for the United States government, writing radio spots to sell war bonds. He lived a fairly secular lifestyle in his early 20s before deciding to return to a more traditional Jewish way of life, modeled after that of his grandfather, in his mid-20s.

Wouk joined the United States Navy and served in the Pacific Theater, 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 latter. He started writing a novel, Aurora Dawn, during off-duty hours aboard ship. Wouk sent a copy of the opening chapters to Irwin Edman who quoted a few pages verbatim to a New York editor. The result was a publisher's contract sent to Wouk's ship, then off the coast of Okinawa. The novel was published in 1947 and became a Book of the Month Club main selection. His second novel, City Boy, proved to be a commercial disappointment at the time of its initial publication in 1948.

While writing his next novel, Wouk read each chapter as it was completed to his wife, who remarked at one point that if they didn't like this one, he'd better take up another line of work (a line he would give to the character of the editor Jeannie Fry in his 1962 novel Youngblood Hawke). The novel, The Caine Mutiny (1951), went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. A huge best-seller, drawing from his wartime experiences aboard minesweepers during World War II, The Caine Mutiny was adapted by the author into a Broadway play called The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, and was later made into a film, with Humphrey Bogart portraying Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg, captain of the fictional USS Caine. Some Navy personnel complained at the time that Wouk had taken every twitch of every commanding officer in the Navy and put them all into one character, but Captain Queeg has endured as one of the great characters in American fiction.

He married Betty Sarah Brown in 1945, with whom he had three sons: Abraham, Nathanial, and Joseph. He became a fulltime writer in 1946 to support his growing family. His first-born son, Abraham Isaac Wouk, died in a tragic accident as a child; Wouk later dedicated War and Remembrance (1978) to him with the Biblical words, "He will destroy death forever."

In 1998, Wouk received the Guardian of Zion Award.

Wouk is still alive as of May 2012 and living in California.
(less)

combine editions
Books by Herman Wouk

Average rating: 4.16 · 28,517 ratings · 1,606 reviews · 32 distinct works

	The Winds of War 4.26 avg rating — 10,833 ratings — published 1970 — 33 editions	My rating:
	War and Remembrance 4.25 avg rating — 6,373 ratings — published 1971 — 17 editions	My rating:
	The Caine Mutiny: A Novel of World War II 4.12 avg rating — 5,208 ratings — published 1951 — 30 editions	My rating:
	Marjorie Morningstar 4.01 avg rating — 2,158 ratings — published 1955 — 24 editions	My rating:
	Don't Stop the Carnival 3.87 avg rating — 861 ratings — published 1965 — 14 editions	My rating:
	The Hope 3.97 avg rating — 580 ratings — published 1993 — 11 editions	My rating:
	Youngblood Hawke 3.95 avg rating — 461 ratings — published 1962 — 15 editions	My rating:
	The Glory: A Novel 4.05 avg rating — 382 ratings — published 1994 — 10 editions	My rating:
	Inside, Outside: A Novel 3.82 avg rating — 288 ratings — published 1985 — 6 editions	My rating:
	City Boy 3.95 avg rating — 274 ratings — published 1948 — 10 editions	My rating:

More books by Herman Wouk…

Upcoming Events

No scheduled events. Add an event.

Quotes by Herman Wouk

“Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.”
― Herman Wouk

tags: fiction , income-tax , on-fiction , taxes , taxing

13 people liked it

“Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming of a state of mind.”
― Herman Wouk, The Winds of War

9 people liked it

“Religious people tend to encounter, among those who are not, a cemented certainty that belief in God is a crutch for the weak and the fearful...Now the belief in God may turn out at the last trump to be a mistake. Meantime, let us be quite clear, it is not merely the comfort of the simple--though it is that too, much to its glory--it is a formidable intellectual position with which most of the first-class minds of the human race, century in and century out, have concurred, each in his own way....speaking of crutches--Freud can be a crutch, Marx can be a crutch, rationalism can be a crutch, and atheism can be two canes and a pair of iron braces. We none of us have all the answers, nor are we likely to have. But in the country of the halt, the man who is surest he has no limp may be the worst-crippled.”
― Herman Wouk, This Is My God: The Jewish Way of Life

tags: athiesm , faith

5 people liked it

See all Herman Wouk's quotes »

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
The Next Best Boo...: OFFICIAL SUMMER CHALLENGE 2009	6757	10112	Aug 31, 2009 10:23pm
100+ Books in 2012: Diane's 100 for 2009	21	68	Sep 09, 2009 05:54am
Novel Ladies: Author Alphabet	1287	93	Dec 01, 2009 05:58am
The Book Addicts!: Nance's TBR Challenge 2010	23	122	Jun 16, 2010 02:56pm
Novel Ladies: Kristi's 2010 Reading Log	26	39	Jun 29, 2010 08:20am
Historical Fictio...: August/September Group Read(s): Mistress of Rome & (Runner-Up) The True Story of Hansel & Gretel	104	120	Aug 09, 2010 12:03pm
Pick-a-Shelf: 2010-08 - Literature - What will you read in August?	49	95	Aug 21, 2010 08:53am
Historical Fictio...: World War II -America's Role	33	84	Aug 22, 2010 09:47am
Historical Fictio...: Challenge #3 - June 1 - August 31st	748	502	Sep 01, 2010 07:10pm

More…

Is this you? Let us know. If not, help out and invite Herman to Goodreads.