H. R. (Hubert Renfro) Knickerbocker

Born in 1898, Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker was an American journalist and author best known for his international reporting. He won the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence for articles on how the Soviet Union's Five-Year Plan worked in practice, and he built a reputation as a reporter willing to travel widely and tackle big political subjects directly.

Knickerbocker wrote about major world movements and leaders at a time when fascism, communism, and economic crisis were reshaping daily life. His books and newspaper work focused on helping general readers understand what he had seen for himself, whether in the Soviet Union or elsewhere in Europe.

He died in 1949, but his writing still reflects the appetite many readers had for on-the-ground reporting from abroad. For listeners interested in historical nonfiction, his work offers a contemporary view of the upheavals that defined the interwar years.