Burton Jesse Hendrick

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1870, Burton J. Hendrick studied at Yale, where he worked on student publications before building a career in journalism and magazine writing. He became known for clear, energetic prose and for making politics, business, and history accessible to general readers.

Hendrick won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1923 for The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page. He also wrote well-known books including The Training of an American, about Andrew Carnegie, The Age of Big Business, and a major multi-volume study of Abraham Lincoln.

Across his career, he focused on influential Americans and the forces shaping modern public life, especially business, government, and reform. He died in 1949, leaving behind a body of work that still reflects the rise of narrative biography as a popular literary form.