Burton Jesse Hendrick

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1870, he studied at Yale, where he edited student publications before moving into newspaper and magazine work. Early in his career he worked for the New Haven Morning News, later wrote for McClure's, and became associated with The World's Work, experiences that helped shape his clear, reportorial style.

Hendrick went on to build a strong reputation as a biographer and historian of modern America. His The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1923, and his two-volume The Life of Andrew Carnegie later earned another Pulitzer in 1930. He also wrote books on subjects ranging from the American merchant marine to everyday life in the United States.

What makes his work still interesting is the way he brought large public figures into focus through sharp storytelling and a journalist's eye for detail. He died in 1949, leaving behind a body of nonfiction that captures the energy of American life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.